The Polish Ideal

The Illustrated London News, July 2, 1927.

“The Polish Ideal”

There are certain things in this world that are at once intensely loved and intensely hated. They are naturally things of a strong character, and either very good or very bad. They generally give a great deal of trouble to everybody, and a special sort of trouble to those who try to destroy them. But they give most trouble of all to those who try to ignore them. Some hate them so insanely as to deny their very existence; but the void made by that negation continues to exasperate those who have made it till they are like men choked with a vacuum. They declare that it shall be nameless, and then never cease to curse its name. This curious case is perhaps best illustrated by example. One example of it is Ireland. Another example is Poland.

Within ten minutes of my stepping from the train on to Polish territory I had heard two phrases—phrases which struck the precise note which thus inspires one-half of the world and infuriates the other half. We were received by a sort of escort of Polish cavalry, and one of the officers made a speech in French—a very fine speech in very good French. In the course of it he used the first of these two typical expressions: “I will not say the chief friend of Poland. God is the chief friend of Poland.” And he afterwards said, in a more playful and conversational moment: “After all, there are only two trades for a man—a poet and a soldier of cavalry.” He said it humorously, and with the delicate implication, “You are a poet and I am a soldier of cavalry. So there we are!” I said that, allowing for the difficulty of anybody having anything to eat if this were literally true, I entirely accepted the sentiment, and heartily agreed with it. But I know there are some people who would not understand it even enough to disagree with it. I know that some people would furiously refuse even to see the joke of it. There is something in that particular sort of romance, or (if you will) in that particular sort of swagger, which moves them quite genuinely to a violent irritation. It is an irritation common among rationalists, among the drier sort of dons, and among the duller sort of public servants.

Now, if all those Polish officers had been Prussian officers, if their swagger had consisted of silently pushing people off the kerbstone, if their ceremony had consisted not in making good speeches but in standing in a row quite speechless, if their faces had been like painted wood and their heads and bodies puffed up with nothing but an east wind of pride, they would not have irritated this sort of critic in this sort of way. They would have soothed him, with a vague sense that this is what soldiers must be. I do not say he would approve of everything they did, but he would accept what they were. It would not anger him or even seem to him absurd, as it does to me, who belong to the other half of mankind. But what does anger him, what does seem to him absurd, is the idea of a soldier civilized; the man who is no more ashamed of the military art than of any other art, but who is interested in other arts—and interested in them all like an artist. That the man in uniform should make a speech, and, worst of all, a good speech, seems comic—like a policeman composing a sonnet. That he should connect a horse-soldier with a poet appears meaningless, like connecting a butcher with a Buddhist monk. In one historic word, these people hate and have always hated the Cavalier. They hate the Cavalier especially when he writes Cavalier songs. They hate the knight when he is also a troubadour. They can understand Ironsides[1] solemnly killing people in the fear of the Lord, as they can understand Prussian soldiers solemnly killing people in the fear of the War-Lord. But they cannot tolerate the combination of wit and culture and courtesy with this business of killing. It seems especially preposterous when the Cavalier adds to all his other dazzling inconsistencies by being quite as religious as the Ironside. The last touch is put to their angry bewilderment when the man who has talked gaily as if nobody mattered except lancers and lyric poets says, with the same simplicity and gaiety, “the only friend of our country is God.”

These critics commonly say that they are irritated with this romantic type because it always fails; so they are naturally even more irritated when it very frequently succeeds. People who are ready to shed tears of sympathy when the windmills overthrow Don Quixote are very angry indeed when Don Quixote really overthrows the windmills. People who are prepared to give a vain blessing to a forlorn hope are not unnaturally annoyed to find that the forlorn hope is comparatively hopeful and not entirely forlorn. Even the most genial of these realists, Mr. Bernard Shaw, would be a little vexed if he had to reverse the whole moral of “Arms and the Man” and admit that the Arms counted for a little less and the Man for a little more. He would be slightly put out, perhaps, if the celebrated artillery duel really took place, and the sentimental Sergius blew the realistic Bluntzschli to pieces. But that is almost exactly what has really happened in modern Europe to-day. That is what happened, for instance, when the practical Mr. Broadbent[2] went bankrupt in his Other Island.

When the Poles defeated the Bolshevists in the field of battle, it was precisely that. It was the old chivalric tradition defeating everything that is modern, everything that is necessitarian, everything that is mechanical in method and materialistic in philosophy. It was the Marxian notion that everything is inevitable defeated by the Christian notion that nothing is inevitable—no, not even what has already happened. Mr. Belloc has put the Polish ideal into lines dedicated to a great Polish shrine—

Hope of the Half-Defeated; house of gold; Shrine of the sword and tower of ivory.[3]

Before I leave these Polish cavaliers I may remark that I had another chance of seeing them at the jumping competitions in the Concours Hippique, and I will only mention one incident and leave it, for it is something of a parable. The course consisted of the usual high obstacle, but there was one which was apparently of a novel pattern and practically insuperable. Anyhow, one after another in that long procession of admirable riders, French, Polish, and Italian, failed at this final test till failure came to be treated as a matter of course; even experts on such occasions differ about the degrees of merits and misfortunes, and I am not an expert at a horse show. One of the Lancers playfully asked me if I was going to compete. I made the obvious answer that, mounted on my favorite elephant, I would undertake to step over many of the fences, though certainly no the last fence of all, which I doubt if a giraffe could bestride. But the general feeling seemed to be that I should be more useful as an obstacle than a surmounter of obstacles, and that, if I lay down on the course, it might be even worse than the worst obstacle.

There was some amusement and some pity for one young Pole—who was, I believe, a novice or relatively untried person—whose mount in some fashion stumble so that the rider was shot over the horse’s head. At least, I thought he was shot over the horse’s head, and then discovered, amid some amazing and jerky gyrations, that he was what can only be called clinging to the horse’s ears. While the horse danced about the course in a dégagé[4] manner, the rider seemed to crawl down his neck in some incredible way and rolled back into the saddle. He found one stirrup and tired in vain to find the other. Then he gave it up—the stirrup, not the race. He cleared a fairly low obstacle before him, and then, seeming to gather a wild impetus from nowhere, with one stirrup flying loose and swaying in the saddle, he charged the last impossible barrier, and, first of all that company, went over it like a bird. And someone said at my elbow with a sharp exclamation, in English: “That’s just like the Poles!”

Hope of the Half-Defeated; house of gold…

1. Ironsides were the Puritan soldiers who fought under Cromwell in the English Civil Wars.

2. Tom Broadbent is a character in George Bernard Shaw’s play John Bull’s Other Island (1904).

3. See Belloc’s “Ballade to Our Lady of Czestochowa”.

4. Dégagé means casual, relaxed.

The Polish Ideal

The Illustrated London News, July 2, 1927.

“The Polish Ideal”

There are certain things in this world that are at once intensely loved and intensely hated. They are naturally things of a strong character, and either very good or very bad. They generally give a great deal of trouble to everybody, and a special sort of trouble to those who try to destroy them. But they give most trouble of all to those who try to ignore them. Some hate them so insanely as to deny their very existence; but the void made by that negation continues to exasperate those who have made it till they are like men choked with a vacuum. They declare that it shall be nameless, and then never cease to curse its name. This curious case is perhaps best illustrated by example. One example of it is Ireland. Another example is Poland.

Within ten minutes of my stepping from the train on to Polish territory I had heard two phrases—phrases which struck the precise note which thus inspires one-half of the world and infuriates the other half. We were received by a sort of escort of Polish cavalry, and one of the officers made a speech in French—a very fine speech in very good French. In the course of it he used the first of these two typical expressions: “I will not say the chief friend of Poland. God is the chief friend of Poland.” And he afterwards said, in a more playful and conversational moment: “After all, there are only two trades for a man—a poet and a soldier of cavalry.” He said it humorously, and with the delicate implication, “You are a poet and I am a soldier of cavalry. So there we are!” I said that, allowing for the difficulty of anybody having anything to eat if this were literally true, I entirely accepted the sentiment, and heartily agreed with it. But I know there are some people who would not understand it even enough to disagree with it. I know that some people would furiously refuse even to see the joke of it. There is something in that particular sort of romance, or (if you will) in that particular sort of swagger, which moves them quite genuinely to a violent irritation. It is an irritation common among rationalists, among the drier sort of dons, and among the duller sort of public servants.

Now, if all those Polish officers had been Prussian officers, if their swagger had consisted of silently pushing people off the kerbstone, if their ceremony had consisted not in making good speeches but in standing in a row quite speechless, if their faces had been like painted wood and their heads and bodies puffed up with nothing but an east wind of pride, they would not have irritated this sort of critic in this sort of way. They would have soothed him, with a vague sense that this is what soldiers must be. I do not say he would approve of everything they did, but he would accept what they were. It would not anger him or even seem to him absurd, as it does to me, who belong to the other half of mankind. But what does anger him, what does seem to him absurd, is the idea of a soldier civilized; the man who is no more ashamed of the military art than of any other art, but who is interested in other arts—and interested in them all like an artist. That the man in uniform should make a speech, and, worst of all, a good speech, seems comic—like a policeman composing a sonnet. That he should connect a horse-soldier with a poet appears meaningless, like connecting a butcher with a Buddhist monk. In one historic word, these people hate and have always hated the Cavalier. They hate the Cavalier especially when he writes Cavalier songs. They hate the knight when he is also a troubadour. They can understand Ironsides[1] solemnly killing people in the fear of the Lord, as they can understand Prussian soldiers solemnly killing people in the fear of the War-Lord. But they cannot tolerate the combination of wit and culture and courtesy with this business of killing. It seems especially preposterous when the Cavalier adds to all his other dazzling inconsistencies by being quite as religious as the Ironside. The last touch is put to their angry bewilderment when the man who has talked gaily as if nobody mattered except lancers and lyric poets says, with the same simplicity and gaiety, “the only friend of our country is God.”

These critics commonly say that they are irritated with this romantic type because it always fails; so they are naturally even more irritated when it very frequently succeeds. People who are ready to shed tears of sympathy when the windmills overthrow Don Quixote are very angry indeed when Don Quixote really overthrows the windmills. People who are prepared to give a vain blessing to a forlorn hope are not unnaturally annoyed to find that the forlorn hope is comparatively hopeful and not entirely forlorn. Even the most genial of these realists, Mr. Bernard Shaw, would be a little vexed if he had to reverse the whole moral of “Arms and the Man” and admit that the Arms counted for a little less and the Man for a little more. He would be slightly put out, perhaps, if the celebrated artillery duel really took place, and the sentimental Sergius blew the realistic Bluntzschli to pieces. But that is almost exactly what has really happened in modern Europe to-day. That is what happened, for instance, when the practical Mr. Broadbent[2] went bankrupt in his Other Island.

L’Ideale Polacco

The Illustrated London News, 2 luglio 1927.

“L’Ideale Polacco”

Vi sono certe cose a questo mondo che sono a un tempo intensamente amate e intensamente odiate. Sono per natura cose di forte carattere, o molto buone o molto cattive. In genere danno un gran daffare a tutti, e una sorta particolare di daffare a coloro che tentano di distruggerle. Ma danno più daffare di ogni altra cosa a coloro che tentano di ignorarle. Alcuni le odiano in modo così folle da negarne la stessa esistenza; ma il vuoto prodotto da quella negazione continua a esasperare coloro che l’hanno fatto, finché non sono come uomini soffocati da un vuoto pneumatico. Dichiarano che essa dev’essere senza nome, e poi non cessano mai di maledirne il nome. Questo caso curioso è forse illustrato al meglio con un esempio. Un esempio è l’Irlanda. Un altro esempio è la Polonia.

Entro dieci minuti dallo scendere dal treno sul territorio polacco avevo udito due frasi… frasi che colpirono la nota precisa che così ispira una metà del mondo e infuria l’altra metà. Fummo ricevuti da una sorta di scorta di cavalleria polacca, e uno degli ufficiali tenne un discorso in francese… un discorso assai bello in un francese assai buono. Nel corso di esso usò la prima di queste due espressioni tipiche: “Non dirò il principale amico della Polonia. Dio è il principale amico della Polonia.” E in seguito disse, in un momento più giocoso e conversevole: “In fondo, non ci sono che due mestieri per un uomo: il poeta e il soldato di cavalleria.” Lo disse con umorismo, e con la delicata implicazione: “Voi siete un poeta e io sono un soldato di cavalleria. E dunque, eccoci qui!” Io dissi che, tenuto conto della difficoltà per chiunque di avere qualcosa da mangiare se ciò fosse letteralmente vero, accettavo interamente il sentimento, e vi concordavo di tutto cuore. Ma so che vi sono alcune persone che non lo comprenderebbero nemmeno abbastanza da dissentirne. So che alcune persone si rifiuterebbero furiosamente persino di coglierne lo scherzo. C’è qualcosa in quel particolare genere di romanticismo, o (se volete) in quel particolare genere di spavalderia, che le muove del tutto sinceramente a una violenta irritazione. È un’irritazione comune tra i razionalisti, tra la specie più arida dei professori e tra la specie più ottusa dei pubblici funzionari.

Ora, se tutti quegli ufficiali polacchi fossero stati ufficiali prussiani, se la loro spavalderia fosse consistita nello spingere silenziosamente la gente giù dal marciapiede, se il loro cerimoniale fosse consistito non nel fare buoni discorsi ma nello stare in fila del tutto muti, se i loro volti fossero stati come legno dipinto e le loro teste e i loro corpi gonfiati di null’altro che un vento d’oriente d’orgoglio, non avrebbero irritato questo genere di critico in questo modo. Lo avrebbero rasserenato, con la vaga sensazione che questo è ciò che i soldati devono essere. Non dico che approverebbe tutto ciò che facevano, ma accetterebbe ciò che erano. Non lo adirerebbe né gli parrebbe assurdo, come pare a me, che appartengo all’altra metà del genere umano. Ma ciò che lo adira, ciò che gli pare assurdo, è l’idea di un soldato civilizzato; l’uomo che non si vergogna dell’arte militare più di quanto si vergogni di qualunque altra arte, ma che si interessa di altre arti… e si interessa di tutte come un artista. Che l’uomo in uniforme faccia un discorso, e, peggio di tutto, un buon discorso, pare comico… come un poliziotto che compone un sonetto. Che egli colleghi un soldato a cavallo con un poeta appare privo di senso, come collegare un macellaio con un monaco buddista. In una storica parola, questa gente odia e ha sempre odiato il Cavaliere. Odiano il Cavaliere specialmente quando scrive canzoni da Cavaliere. Odiano il cavaliere quando è anche un trovatore. Possono comprendere i Fianchi di Ferro[1] che uccidono la gente solennemente nel timore del Signore, così come possono comprendere i soldati prussiani che uccidono la gente solennemente nel timore del Signore della Guerra. Ma non possono tollerare la combinazione di arguzia, cultura e cortesia con questo mestiere di uccidere. Pare loro particolarmente assurdo quando il Cavaliere aggiunge a tutte le sue altre abbaglianti incoerenze l’essere religioso quanto il Fianco di Ferro. L’ultimo tocco è dato al loro adirato sconcerto quando l’uomo che ha parlato allegramente come se nessuno contasse tranne i lancieri e i poeti lirici dice, con la stessa semplicità e allegria: “il solo amico del nostro paese è Dio.”

Questi critici comunemente dicono di essere irritati da questo tipo romantico perché fallisce sempre; e così sono naturalmente ancor più irritati quando esso assai di frequente riesce. Le persone pronte a versare lacrime di compassione quando i mulini a vento rovesciano Don Quixote sono davvero furiose quando Don Quixote rovescia realmente i mulini a vento. Le persone disposte a dare una vana benedizione a una speranza disperata non sono innaturalmente seccate di scoprire che la speranza disperata è relativamente promettente e non del tutto disperata. Anche il più geniale di questi realisti, il signor Bernard Shaw, sarebbe un po’ contrariato se dovesse capovolgere l’intera morale di “Arms and the Man” e ammettere che le Armi contavano un po’ meno e l’Uomo un po’ di più. Sarebbe leggermente sconcertato, forse, se il celebre duello d’artiglieria avesse davvero luogo, e il sentimentale Sergius facesse a pezzi il realistico Bluntzschli. Ma questo è quasi esattamente ciò che è realmente accaduto oggi nell’Europa moderna. È ciò che è accaduto, per esempio, quando il pratico signor Broadbent[2] fece bancarotta nella sua Altra Isola.

When the Poles defeated the Bolshevists in the field of battle, it was precisely that. It was the old chivalric tradition defeating everything that is modern, everything that is necessitarian, everything that is mechanical in method and materialistic in philosophy. It was the Marxian notion that everything is inevitable defeated by the Christian notion that nothing is inevitable—no, not even what has already happened. Mr. Belloc has put the Polish ideal into lines dedicated to a great Polish shrine—

Hope of the Half-Defeated; house of gold; Shrine of the sword and tower of ivory.[3]

Before I leave these Polish cavaliers I may remark that I had another chance of seeing them at the jumping competitions in the Concours Hippique, and I will only mention one incident and leave it, for it is something of a parable. The course consisted of the usual high obstacle, but there was one which was apparently of a novel pattern and practically insuperable. Anyhow, one after another in that long procession of admirable riders, French, Polish, and Italian, failed at this final test till failure came to be treated as a matter of course; even experts on such occasions differ about the degrees of merits and misfortunes, and I am not an expert at a horse show. One of the Lancers playfully asked me if I was going to compete. I made the obvious answer that, mounted on my favorite elephant, I would undertake to step over many of the fences, though certainly no the last fence of all, which I doubt if a giraffe could bestride. But the general feeling seemed to be that I should be more useful as an obstacle than a surmounter of obstacles, and that, if I lay down on the course, it might be even worse than the worst obstacle.

There was some amusement and some pity for one young Pole—who was, I believe, a novice or relatively untried person—whose mount in some fashion stumble so that the rider was shot over the horse’s head. At least, I thought he was shot over the horse’s head, and then discovered, amid some amazing and jerky gyrations, that he was what can only be called clinging to the horse’s ears. While the horse danced about the course in a dégagé[4] manner, the rider seemed to crawl down his neck in some incredible way and rolled back into the saddle. He found one stirrup and tired in vain to find the other. Then he gave it up—the stirrup, not the race. He cleared a fairly low obstacle before him, and then, seeming to gather a wild impetus from nowhere, with one stirrup flying loose and swaying in the saddle, he charged the last impossible barrier, and, first of all that company, went over it like a bird. And someone said at my elbow with a sharp exclamation, in English: “That’s just like the Poles!”

Hope of the Half-Defeated; house of gold…

1. Ironsides were the Puritan soldiers who fought under Cromwell in the English Civil Wars.

2. Tom Broadbent is a character in George Bernard Shaw’s play John Bull’s Other Island (1904).

3. See Belloc’s “Ballade to Our Lady of Czestochowa”.

4. Dégagé means casual, relaxed.

Quando i Polacchi sconfissero i bolscevichi sul campo di battaglia, fu precisamente quello. Fu l’antica tradizione cavalleresca che sconfiggeva tutto ciò che è moderno, tutto ciò che è necessitarista, tutto ciò che è meccanico nel metodo e materialistico nella filosofia. Fu la nozione marxiana che tutto è inevitabile, sconfitta dalla nozione cristiana che nulla è inevitabile—no, nemmeno ciò che è già accaduto. Il signor Belloc ha trasfuso l’ideale polacco in versi dedicati a un grande santuario polacco—

Speranza dei Mezzo-Sconfitti; casa d’oro; Santuario della spada e torre d’avorio.[3]

Prima di lasciare questi cavalieri polacchi posso osservare che ebbi un’altra occasione di vederli alle gare di salto nel Concours Hippique, e mi limiterò a menzionare un episodio e a lasciarlo lì, poiché ha qualcosa di una parabola. Il percorso comprendeva il consueto ostacolo alto, ma ce n’era uno che appariva di foggia nuova e praticamente insuperabile. Comunque, uno dopo l’altro in quella lunga processione di cavalieri ammirevoli, francesi, polacchi e italiani, falliva a questa prova finale, finché il fallimento non venne trattato come cosa scontata; anche gli esperti in simili occasioni divergono sui gradi di merito e di sventura, e io non sono un esperto di cavalli. Uno dei Lancieri mi chiese scherzosamente se avessi intenzione di gareggiare. Diedi l’ovvia risposta che, in groppa al mio elefante prediletto, mi sarei impegnato a scavalcare molte delle barriere, benché di certo non l’ultima di tutte, che dubito una giraffa potrebbe cavalcare. Ma il sentimento generale sembrava essere che sarei stato più utile come ostacolo che come superatore di ostacoli, e che, se mi fossi disteso sul percorso, avrei potuto essere peggio del peggiore degli ostacoli.

Vi fu un po’ di divertimento e un po’ di compassione per un giovane polacco—che era, credo, un principiante o persona relativamente inesperta—la cui cavalcatura in qualche modo inciampò così che il cavaliere fu scagliato oltre la testa del cavallo. Almeno, pensai che fosse scagliato oltre la testa del cavallo, e poi scoprii, tra alcune stupefacenti e sussultanti evoluzioni, che stava facendo ciò che si può solo definire aggrapparsi alle orecchie del cavallo. Mentre il cavallo danzava per il percorso in maniera dégagé[4], il cavaliere sembrava strisciargli giù per il collo in qualche modo incredibile e rotolò di nuovo in sella. Trovò una staffa e cercò invano di trovare l’altra. Poi vi rinunciò—alla staffa, non alla gara. Superò un ostacolo abbastanza basso davanti a sé, e poi, sembrando raccogliere un impeto selvaggio dal nulla, con una staffa che volava libera e oscillando in sella, caricò l’ultima impossibile barriera, e, primo di tutta quella compagnia, la valicò come un uccello. E qualcuno disse al mio fianco con una brusca esclamazione, in inglese: “Ecco, questi sono i Polacchi!”

Speranza dei Mezzo-Sconfitti; casa d’oro…

1. Gli Ironsides erano i soldati puritani che combatterono sotto Cromwell nelle guerre civili inglesi.

2. Tom Broadbent è un personaggio della commedia di George Bernard Shaw John Bull’s Other Island (1904).

3. Vedi “Ballade to Our Lady of Czestochowa” di Belloc.

4. Dégagé significa disinvolto, rilassato.