UtopiaUsurers

by Chesterton · Cluster: Essay · Critique of Progress · Common Man

Abstract

A collection of polemical essays attacking capitalism, plutocracy, and the Servile State, advocating Distributism and warning of a dystopia ruled by usurers; opens with militant verse on the Irish road.

Capitoli / Chapters

Readability (prose)59.9 Flesch ease10.4 FK grade13.8 Fog12% complex22.3 words/sent

Connections

Historical References: French Revolution, First World War, Irish Question, Industrial Revolution, Marconi Scandal

Archetypes: Tyrant, Fool, Rebel, Corrupt Official

Settings: Germany, London, Ireland, Europe

Motifs: Money and Gold, Prison, Chains Themes & Concepts: Anti-Industrialism, Distributism, Power and Corruption, Social Injustice, Class Conflict, Critique of Progress, Slavery, Crime and Punishment, Satire of Society, Freedom and Liberty, Democracy, Nationalism and Patriotism, Eugenics, Economics, History Forms & Genres: Essay, Nonfiction

Testo integrale / Full text

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Utopia of Usurers and other Essays, by

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Utopia of Usurers and other Essays

Author: Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Release Date: April, 2000 [EBook #2134]

Last Updated: July 26, 2012

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UTOPIA OF USURERS AND OTHER ESSAYS ***

Produced by Mike Pullen

UTOPIA OF USURERS AND OTHER ESSAYS

By Gilbert Keith Chesterton

CONTENTS

 A Song of Swords

 Utopia of Usurers

  I. Art and Advertisement

  II. Letters and the New Laureates

  III. Unbusinesslike Business

  IV. The War on Holidays

  V. The Church of the Servile State

  VI. Science and the Eugenists

  VII. The Evolution of the Prison

  VIII. The Lash for Labour

  IX. The Mask of Socialism

 The Escape

 The New Raid

 The New Name

 A Workman's History of England

 The French Revolution and the Irish

 Liberalism: A Sample

 The Fatigue of Fleet Street

 The Amnesty for Aggression

 Revive the Court Jester

 The Art of Missing the Point

 The Servile State Again

 The Empire of the Ignorant

 The Symbolism of Krupp

 The Tower of Bebel

 A Real Danger

 The Dregs of Puritanism

 The Tyranny of Bad Journalism

 The Poetry of the Revolution

A SONG OF SWORDS

“A drove of cattle came into a village called Swords;

and was stopped by the rioters.”—Daily Paper.

In the place called Swords on the Irish road

It is told for a new renown

How we held the horns of the cattle, and how

We will hold the horns of the devils now

Ere the lord of hell with the horn on his brow

Is crowned in Dublin town.

Light in the East and light in the West,

And light on the cruel lords,

On the souls that suddenly all men knew,

And the green flag flew and the red flag flew,

And many a wheel of the world stopped, too,

When the cattle were stopped at Swords.

Be they sinners or less than saints

That smite in the street for rage,

We know where the shame shines bright; we know

You that they smite at, you their foe,

Lords of the lawless wage and low,

This is your lawful wage.

You pinched a child to a torture price

That you dared not name in words;

So black a jest was the silver bit

That your own speech shook for the shame of it,

And the coward was plain as a cow they hit

When the cattle have strayed at Swords.

The wheel of the torrent of wives went round

To break men’s brotherhood;

You gave the good Irish blood to grease

The clubs of your country’s enemies;

you saw the brave man beat to the knees:

And you saw that it was good.

The rope of the rich is long and long—

The longest of hangmen’s cords;

But the kings and crowds are holding their breath,

In a giant shadow o’er all beneath

Where God stands holding the scales of Death

Between the cattle and Swords.

Haply the lords that hire and lend

The lowest of all men’s lords,

Who sell their kind like kine at a fair,

Will find no head of their cattle there;

But faces of men where cattle were:

Faces of men—and Swords.

UTOPIA OF USURERS

I. Art and Advertisement

I propose, subject to the patience of the reader, to devote two or

three articles to prophecy. Like all healthy-minded prophets, sacred and

profane, I can only prophesy when I am in a rage and think things look

ugly for everybody. And like all healthy-minded prophets, I prophesy in

the hope that my prophecy may not come true. For the prediction made by

the true soothsayer is like the warning given by a good doctor. And the

doctor has really triumphed when the patient he condemned to death has

revived to life. The threat is justified at the very moment when it is

falsified. Now I have said again and again (and I shall continue to say

again and again on all the most inappropriate occasions) that we must

hit Capitalism, and hit it hard, for the plain and definite reason that

it is growing stronger. Most of the excuses which serve the capitalists

as masks are, of course, the excuses of hypocrites. They lie when they

claim philanthropy; they no more feel any particular love of men than

Albu felt an affection for Chinamen. They lie when they say they have

reached their position through their own organising ability. They

generally have to pay men to organise the mine, exactly as they pay

men to go down it. They often lie about the present wealth, as they

generally lie about their past poverty. But when they say that they

are going in for a “constructive social policy,” they do not lie. They

really are going in for a constructive social policy. And we must go in

for an equally destructive social policy; and destroy, while it is still

half-constructed, the accursed thing which they construct.

The Example of the Arts

Now I propose to take, one after another, certain aspects and

departments of modern life, and describe what I think they will be like

in this paradise of plutocrats, this Utopia of gold and brass in which

the great story of England seems so likely to end. I propose to say what

I think our new masters, the mere millionaires, will do with certain

human interests and institutions, such as art, science, jurisprudence,

or religion—unless we strike soon enough to prevent them. And for the

sake of argument I will take in this article the example of the arts.

Most people have seen a picture called “Bubbles,” which is used for the

advertisement of a celebrated soap, a small cake of which is introduced

into the pictorial design. And anybody with an instinct for design (the

caricaturist of the Daily Herald, for instance), will guess that it was

not originally a part of the design. He will see that the cake of soap

destroys the picture as a picture; as much as if the cake of soap had

been used to Scrub off the paint. Small as it is, it breaks and confuses

the whole balance of objects in the composition. I offer no judgment

here upon Millais’s action in the matter; in fact, I do not know what

it was. The important point for me at the moment is that the picture

was not painted for the soap, but the soap added to the picture. And

the spirit of the corrupting change which has separated us from that

Victorian epoch can be best seen in this: that the Victorian atmosphere,

with all its faults, did not permit such a style of patronage to pass as

a matter of course. Michael Angelo may have been proud to have helped an

emperor or a pope; though, indeed, I think he was prouder than they

were on his own account. I do not believe Sir John Millais was proud of

having helped a soap-boiler. I do not say he thought it wrong; but he

was not proud of it. And that marks precisely the change from his time

to our own. Our merchants have really adopted the style of merchant

princes. They have begun openly to dominate the civilisation of the

State, as the emperors and popes openly dominated in Italy. In Millais’s

time, broadly speaking, art was supposed to mean good art; advertisement

was supposed to mean inferior art. The head of a black man, painted

to advertise somebody’s blacking, could be a rough symbol, like an inn

sign. The black man had only to be black enough. An artist exhibiting

the picture of a negro was expected to know that a black man is not so

black as he is painted. He was expected to render a thousand tints of

grey and brown and violet: for there is no such thing as a black man

just as there is no such thing as a white man. A fairly clear line

separated advertisement from art.

The First Effect

I should say the first effect of the triumph of the capitalist (if

we allow him to triumph) will be that that line of demarcation will

entirely disappear. There will be no art that might not just as well be

advertisement. I do not necessarily mean that there will be no good art;

much of it might be, much of it already is, very good art. You may put

it, if you please, in the form that there has been a vast improvement in

advertisements. Certainly there would be nothing surprising if the head

of a negro advertising Somebody’s Blacking now adays were finished

with as careful and subtle colours as one of the old and superstitious

painters would have wasted on the negro king who brought gifts to

Christ. But the improvement of advertisements is the degradation of

artists. It is their degradation for this clear and vital reason: that

the artist will work, not only to please the rich, but only to increase

their riches; which is a considerable step lower. After all, it was as

a human being that a pope took pleasure in a cartoon of Raphael or a

prince took pleasure in a statuette of Cellini. The prince paid for

the statuette; but he did not expect the statuette to pay him. It is my

impression that no cake of soap can be found anywhere in the cartoons

which the Pope ordered of Raphael. And no one who knows the small-minded

cynicism of our plutocracy, its secrecy, its gambling spirit, its

contempt of conscience, can doubt that the artist-advertiser will often

be assisting enterprises over which he will have no moral control, and

of which he could feel no moral approval. He will be working to spread

quack medicines, queer investments; and will work for Marconi instead of

Medici. And to this base ingenuity he will have to bend the proudest

and purest of the virtues of the intellect, the power to attract his

brethren, and the noble duty of praise. For that picture by Millais is

a very allegorical picture. It is almost a prophecy of what uses are

awaiting the beauty of the child unborn. The praise will be of a kind

that may correctly be called soap; and the enterprises of a kind that

may truly be described as Bubbles.

II. Letters and the New Laureates

In these articles I only take two or three examples of the first and

fundamental fact of our time. I mean the fact that the capitalists of

our community are becoming quite openly the kings of it. In my last (and

first) article, I took the case of Art and advertisement. I pointed out

that Art must be growing worse—merely because advertisement is growing

better. In those days Millais condescended to Pears’ soap. In these days

I really think it would be Pears who condescended to Millais. But here

I turn to an art I know more about, that of journalism. Only in my ease

the art verges on artlessness.

The great difficulty with the English lies in the absence of something

one may call democratic imagination. We find it easy to realise an

individual, but very hard to realise that the great masses consist of

individuals. Our system has been aristocratic: in the special sense of

there being only a few actors on the stage. And the back scene is kept

quite dark, though it is really a throng of faces. Home Rule tended to

be not so much the Irish as the Grand Old Man. The Boer War tended not

to be so much South Africa as simply “Joe.” And it is the amusing but

distressing fact that every class of political leadership, as it comes

to the front in its turn, catches the rays of this isolating lime-light;

and becomes a small aristocracy. Certainly no one has the aristocratic

complaint so badly as the Labour Party. At the recent Congress, the real

difference between Larkin and the English Labour leaders was not so much

in anything right or wrong in what he said, as in something elemental

and even mystical in the way he suggested a mob. But it must be plain,

even to those who agree with the more official policy, that for Mr.

Havelock Wilson the principal question was Mr. Havelock Wilson; and that

Mr. Sexton was mainly considering the dignity and fine feelings of Mr.

Sexton. You may say they were as sensitive as aristocrats, or as sulky

as babies; the point is that the feeling was personal. But Larkin, like

Danton, not only talks like ten thousand men talking, but he also has

some of the carelessness of the colossus of Arcis; “Que mon nom soit

fletri, que la France soit libre.”

A Dance of Degradation

It is needless to say that this respecting of persons has led all the

other parties a dance of degradation. We ruin South Africa because it

would be a slight on Lord Gladstone to save South Africa. We have a bad

army, because it would be a snub to Lord Haldane to have a good army.

And no Tory is allowed to say “Marconi” for fear Mr. George should say

“Kynoch.” But this curious personal element, with its appalling lack of

patriotism, has appeared in a new and curious form in another department

of life; the department of literature, especially periodical literature.

And the form it takes is the next example I shall give of the way in

which the capitalists are now appearing, more and more openly, as the

masters and princes of the community.

I will take a Victorian instance to mark the change; as I did in the

case of the advertisement of “Bubbles.” It was said in my childhood, by

the more apoplectic and elderly sort of Tory, that W. E. Gladstone was

only a Free Trader because he had a partnership in Gilbey’s foreign

wines. This was, no doubt, nonsense; but it had a dim symbolic, or

mainly prophetic, truth in it. It was true, to some extent even then,

and it has been increasingly true since, that the statesman was often an

ally of the salesman; and represented not only a nation of shopkeepers,

but one particular shop. But in Gladstone’s time, even if this was true,

it was never the whole truth; and no one would have endured it being the

admitted truth. The politician was not solely an eloquent and persuasive

bagman travelling for certain business men; he was bound to mix even his

corruption with some intelligible ideals and rules of policy. And the

proof of it is this: that at least it was the statesman who bulked

large in the public eye; and his financial backer was entirely in the

background. Old gentlemen might choke over their port, with the moral

certainty that the Prime Minister had shares in a wine merchant’s. But

the old gentleman would have died on the spot if the wine merchant had

really been made as important as the Prime Minister. If it had been

Sir Walter Gilbey whom Disraeli denounced, or Punch caricatured; if

Sir Walter Gilbey’s favourite collars (with the design of which I am

unacquainted) had grown as large as the wings of an archangel; if

Sir Walter Gilbey had been credited with successfully eliminating the

British Oak with his little hatchet; if, near the Temple and the

Courts of Justice, our sight was struck by a majestic statue of a

wine merchant; or if the earnest Conservative lady who threw a

gingerbread-nut at the Premier had directed it towards the wine merchant

instead, the shock to Victorian England would have been very great

indeed.

Haloes for Employers

Now something very like that is happening; the mere wealthy employer is

beginning to have not only the power but some of the glory. I have

seen in several magazines lately, and magazines of a high class, the

appearance of a new kind of article. Literary men are being employed to

praise a big business man personally, as men used to praise a king. They

not only find political reasons for the commercial schemes—that they

have done for some time past—they also find moral defences for the

commercial schemers. They describe the capitalist’s brain of steel and

heart of gold in a way that Englishmen hitherto have been at least in

the habit of reserving for romantic figures like Garibaldi or Gordon. In

one excellent magazine Mr. T. P. O’Connor, who, when he likes, can write

on letters like a man of letters, has some purple pages of praise of

Sir Joseph Lyons—the man who runs those teashop places. He incidentally

brought in a delightful passage about the beautiful souls possessed

by some people called Salmon and Gluckstein. I think I like best the

passage where he said that Lyons’s charming social accomplishments

included a talent for “imitating a Jew.” The article is accompanied with

a large and somewhat leering portrait of that shopkeeper, which makes

the parlour-trick in question particularly astonishing. Another literary

man, who certainly ought to know better, wrote in another paper a piece

of hero-worship about Mr. Selfridge. No doubt the fashion will spread,

and the art of words, as polished and pointed by Ruskin or Meredith,

will be perfected yet further to explore the labyrinthine heart of

Harrod; or compare the simple stoicism of Marshall with the saintly

charm of Snelgrove.

Any man can be praised—and rightly praised. If he only stands on two

legs he does something a cow cannot do. If a rich man can manage to

stand on two legs for a reasonable time, it is called self-control. If

he has only one leg, it is called (with some truth) self-sacrifice. I

could say something nice (and true) about every man I have ever met.

Therefore, I do not doubt I could find something nice about Lyons or

Selfridge if I searched for it. But I shall not. The nearest postman or

cab-man will provide me with just the same brain of steel and heart

of gold as these unlucky lucky men. But I do resent the whole age

of patronage being revived under such absurd patrons; and all poets

becoming court poets, under kings that have taken no oath, nor led us

into any battle.

III. Unbusinesslike Business

The fairy tales we were all taught did not, like the history we were all

taught, consist entirely of lies. Parts of the tale of “Puss in Boots”

or “Jack and the Beanstalk” may strike the realistic eye as a little

unlikely and out of the common way, so to speak; but they contain some

very solid and very practical truths. For instance, it may be noted

that both in “Puss in Boots” and “Jack and the Beanstalk” if I remember

aright, the ogre was not only an ogre but also a magician. And it will

generally be found that in all such popular narratives, the king, if he

is a wicked king, is generally also a wizard. Now there is a very vital

human truth enshrined in this. Bad government, like good government,

is a spiritual thing. Even the tyrant never rules by force alone; but

mostly by fairy tales. And so it is with the modern tyrant, the great

employer. The sight of a millionaire is seldom, in the ordinary sense,

an enchanting sight: nevertheless, he is in his way an enchanter. As

they say in the gushing articles about him in the magazines, he is a

fascinating personality. So is a snake. At least he is fascinating to

rabbits; and so is the millionaire to the rabbit-witted sort of people

that ladies and gentlemen have allowed themselves to become. He does,

in a manner, cast a spell, such as that which imprisoned princes and

princesses under the shapes of falcons or stags. He has truly turned men

into sheep, as Circe turned them into swine.

Now, the chief of the fairy tales, by which he gains this glory and

glamour, is a certain hazy association he has managed to create between

the idea of bigness and the idea of practicality. Numbers of the

rabbit-witted ladies and gentlemen do really think, in spite of

themselves and their experience, that so long as a shop has hundreds

of different doors and a great many hot and unhealthy underground

departments (they must be hot; this is very important), and more people

than would be needed for a man-of-war, or crowded cathedral, to say:

“This way, madam,” and “The next article, sir,” it follows that

the goods are good. In short, they hold that the big businesses are

businesslike. They are not. Any housekeeper in a truthful mood, that

is to say, any housekeeper in a bad temper, will tell you that they are

not. But housekeepers, too, are human, and therefore inconsistent and

complex; and they do not always stick to truth and bad temper. They are

also affected by this queer idolatry of the enormous and elaborate; and

cannot help feeling that anything so complicated must go like clockwork.

But complexity is no guarantee of accuracy—in clockwork or in anything

else. A clock can be as wrong as the human head; and a clock can stop,

as suddenly as the human heart.

But this strange poetry of plutocracy prevails over people against their

very senses. You write to one of the great London stores or emporia,

asking, let us say, for an umbrella. A month or two afterwards you

receive a very elaborately constructed parcel, containing a broken

parasol. You are very pleased. You are gratified to reflect on what

a vast number of assistants and employees had combined to break that

parasol. You luxuriate in the memory of all those long rooms and

departments and wonder in which of them the parasol that you never

ordered was broken. Or you want a toy elephant for your child on

Christmas Day; as children, like all nice and healthy people, are very

ritualistic. Some week or so after Twelfth Night, let us say, you have

the pleasure of removing three layers of pasteboards, five layers of

brown paper, and fifteen layers of tissue paper and discovering the

fragments of an artificial crocodile. You smile in an expansive spirit.

You feel that your soul has been broadened by the vision of incompetence

conducted on so large a scale. You admire all the more the colossal

and Omnipresent Brain of the Organiser of Industry, who amid all his

multitudinous cares did not disdain to remember his duty of smashing

even the smallest toy of the smallest child. Or, supposing you have

asked him to send you some two rolls of cocoa-nut matting: and supposing

(after a due interval for reflection) he duly delivers to you the five

rolls of wire netting. You take pleasure in the consideration of a

mystery: which coarse minds might have called a mistake. It consoles you

to know how big the business is: and what an enormous number of people

were needed to make such a mistake.

That is the romance that has been told about the big shops; in the

literature and art which they have bought, and which (as I said in

my recent articles) will soon be quite indistinguishable from their

ordinary advertisements. The literature is commercial; and it is

only fair to say that the commerce is often really literary. It is no

romance, but only rubbish.

The big commercial concerns of to-day are quite exceptionally

incompetent. They will be even more incompetent when they are

omnipotent. Indeed, that is, and always has been, the whole point of

a monopoly; the old and sound argument against a monopoly. It is only

because it is incompetent that it has to be omnipotent. When one large

shop occupies the whole of one side of a street (or sometimes both

sides), it does so in order that men may be unable to get what they

want; and may be forced to buy what they don’t want. That the rapidly

approaching kingdom of the Capitalists will ruin art and letters, I

have already said. I say here that in the only sense that can be called

human, it will ruin trade, too.

I will not let Christmas go by, even when writing for a revolutionary

paper necessarily appealing to many with none of my religious

sympathies, without appealing to those sympathies. I knew a man who sent

to a great rich shop for a figure for a group of Bethlehem. It arrived

broken. I think that is exactly all that business men have now the sense

to do.

IV. The War on Holidays

The general proposition, not always easy to define exhaustively, that

the reign of the capitalist will be the reign of the cad—that is, of

the unlicked type that is neither the citizen nor the gentleman—can

be excellently studied in its attitude towards holidays. The special

emblematic Employer of to-day, especially the Model Employer (who is

the worst sort) has in his starved and evil heart a sincere hatred of

holidays. I do not mean that he necessarily wants all his workmen to

work until they drop; that only occurs when he happens to be stupid as

well as wicked. I do not mean to say that he is necessarily unwilling to

grant what he would call “decent hours of labour.” He may treat men like

dirt; but if you want to make money, even out of dirt, you must let

it lie fallow by some rotation of rest. He may treat men as dogs, but

unless he is a lunatic he will for certain periods let sleeping dogs

lie.

But humane and reasonable hours for labour have nothing whatever to do

with the idea of holidays. It is not even a question of ten hours day

and eight-hours day; it is not a question of cutting down leisure to

the space necessary for food, sleep and exercise. If the modern employer

came to the conclusion, for some reason or other, that he could get most

out of his men by working them hard for only two hours a day, his whole

mental attitude would still be foreign and hostile to holidays. For his

whole mental attitude is that the passive time and the active time are

alike useful for him and his business. All is, indeed, grist that

comes to his mill, including the millers. His slaves still serve him in

unconsciousness, as dogs still hunt in slumber. His grist is ground not

only by the sounding wheels of iron, but by the soundless wheel of blood

and brain. His sacks are still filling silently when the doors are shut

on the streets and the sound of the grinding is low.

The Great Holiday

Now a holiday has no connection with using a man either by beating or

feeding him. When you give a man a holiday you give him back his body

and soul. It is quite possible you may be doing him an injury (though

he seldom thinks so), but that does not affect the question for those to

whom a holiday is holy. Immortality is the great holiday; and a holiday,

like the immortality in the old theologies, is a double-edged privilege.

But wherever it is genuine it is simply the restoration and completion

of the man. If people ever looked at the printed word under their eye,

the word “recreation” would be like the word “resurrection,” the blast

of a trumpet.

A man, being merely useful, is necessarily incomplete, especially if

he be a modern man and means by being useful being “utilitarian.” A man

going into a modern club gives up his hat; a man going into a modern

factory gives up his head. He then goes in and works loyally for the old

firm to build up the great fabric of commerce (which can be done without

a head), but when he has done work he goes to the cloak-room, like the

man at the club, and gets his head back again; that is the germ of the

holiday. It may be urged that the club man who leaves his hat often goes

away with another hat; and perhaps it may be the same with the factory

hand who has left his head. A hand that has lost its head may affect the

fastidious as a mixed metaphor; but, God pardon us all, what an unmixed

truth! We could almost prove the whole ease from the habit of calling

human beings merely “hands” while they are working; as if the hand were

horribly cut off, like the hand that has offended; as if, while the

sinner entered heaven maimed, his unhappy hand still laboured laying

up riches for the lords of hell. But to return to the man whom we found

waiting for his head in the cloak-room. It may be urged, we say, that he

might take the wrong head, like the wrong hat; but here the similarity

ceases. For it has been observed by benevolent onlookers at life’s drama

that the hat taken away by mistake is frequently better than the real

hat; whereas the head taken away after the hours of toil is certainly

worse: stained with the cobwebs and dust of this dustbin of all the

centuries.

The Supreme Adventure

All the words dedicated to places of eating and drinking are pure

and poetic words. Even the word “hotel” is the word hospital. And St.

Julien, whose claret I drank this Christmas, was the patron saint of

innkeepers, because (as far as I can make out) he was hospitable to

lepers. Now I do not say that the ordinary hotel-keeper in Piccadilly or

the Avenue de l’Opera would embrace a leper, slap him on the back, and

ask him to order what he liked; but I do say that hospitality is his

trade virtue. And I do also say it is well to keep before our eyes the

supreme adventure of a virtue. If you are brave, think of the man who

was braver than you. If you are kind, think of the man who was kinder

than you.

That is what was meant by having a patron saint. That is the link

between the poor saint who received bodily lepers and the great hotel

proprietor who (as a rule) receives spiritual lepers. But a word yet

weaker than “hotel” illustrates the same point—the word “restaurant.”

There again you have the admission that there is a definite building or

statue to “restore”; that ineffaceable image of man that some call the

image of God. And that is the holiday; it is the restaurant or restoring

thing that, by a blast of magic, turns a man into himself.

This complete and reconstructed man is the nightmare of the modern

capitalist. His whole scheme would crack across like a mirror of

Shallot, if once a plain man were ready for his two plain duties—ready

to live and ready to die. And that horror of holidays which marks the

modern capitalist is very largely a horror of the vision of a whole

human being: something that is not a “hand” or a “head for figures.” But

an awful creature who has met himself in the wilderness. The employers

will give time to eat, time to sleep; they are in terror of a time to

think.

To anyone who knows any history it is wholly needless to say that

holidays have been destroyed. As Mr. Belloc, who knows much more

history than you or I, recently pointed out in the “Pall Mall Magazine,”

Shakespeare’s title of “Twelfth Night: or What You Will” simply meant

that a winter carnival for everybody went on wildly till the twelfth

night after Christmas. Those of my readers who work for modern offices

or factories might ask their employers for twelve days’ holidays after

Christmas. And they might let me know the reply.

V. THE CHURCH OF THE SERVILE STATE

I confess I cannot see why mere blasphemy by itself should be an excuse

for tyranny and treason; or how the mere isolated fact of a man not

believing in God should be a reason for my believing in Him.

But the rather spinsterish flutter among some of the old Freethinkers

has put one tiny ripple of truth in it; and that affects the idea which

I wish to emphasise even to monotony in these pages. I mean the idea

that the new community which the capitalists are now constructing will

be a very complete and absolute community; and one which will tolerate

nothing really independent of itself. Now, it is true that any positive

creed, true or false, would tend to be independent of itself. It might

be Roman Catholicism or Mahomedanism or Materialism; but, if strongly

held, it would be a thorn in the side of the Servile State. The Moslem

thinks all men immortal: the Materialist thinks all men mortal. But the

Moslem does not think the rich Sinbad will live forever; but the poor

Sinbad will die on his deathbed. The Materialist does not think that Mr.

Haeckel will go to heaven, while all the peasants will go to pot, like

their chickens. In every serious doctrine of the destiny of men, there

is some trace of the doctrine of the equality of men. But the capitalist

really depends on some religion of inequality. The capitalist must

somehow distinguish himself from human kind; he must be obviously above

it—or he would be obviously below it. Take even the least attractive

and popular side of the larger religions to-day; take the mere vetoes

imposed by Islam on Atheism or Catholicism. The Moslem veto upon

intoxicants cuts across all classes. But it is absolutely necessary for

the capitalist (who presides at a Licensing Committee, and also at a

large dinner), it is absolutely necessary for him, to make a distinction

between gin and champagne. The Atheist veto upon all miracles cuts

across all classes. But it is absolutely necessary for the capitalist to

make a distinction between his wife (who is an aristocrat and consults

crystal gazers and star gazers in the West End), and vulgar miracles

claimed by gipsies or travelling showmen. The Catholic veto upon usury,

as defined in dogmatic councils, cuts across all classes. But it is

absolutely necessary to the capitalist to distinguish more delicately

between two kinds of usury; the kind he finds useful and the kind he

does not find useful. The religion of the Servile State must have no

dogmas or definitions. It cannot afford to have any definitions. For

definitions are very dreadful things: they do the two things that most

men, especially comfortable men, cannot endure. They fight; and they

fight fair.

Every religion, apart from open devil worship, must appeal to a virtue

or the pretence of a virtue. But a virtue, generally speaking, does some

good to everybody. It is therefore necessary to distinguish among

the people it was meant to benefit those whom it does benefit. Modern

broad-mindedness benefits the rich; and benefits nobody else. It was

meant to benefit the rich; and meant to benefit nobody else. And if you

think this unwarranted, I will put before you one plain question. There

are some pleasures of the poor that may also mean profits for the rich:

there are other pleasures of the poor which cannot mean profits for the

rich? Watch this one contrast, and you will watch the whole creation of

a careful slavery.

In the last resort the two things called Beer and Soap end only in a

froth. They are both below the high notice of a real religion. But

there is just this difference: that the soap makes the factory more

satisfactory, while the beer only makes the workman more satisfied. Wait

and see if the Soap does not increase and the Beer decrease. Wait and

see whether the religion of the Servile State is not in every case what

I say: the encouragement of small virtues supporting capitalism, the

discouragement of the huge virtues that defy it. Many great religions,

Pagan and Christian, have insisted on wine. Only one, I think, has

insisted on Soap. You will find it in the New Testament attributed to

the Pharisees.

VI. SCIENCE AND THE EUGENISTS

The key fact in the new development of plutocracy is that it will use

its own blunder as an excuse for further crimes. Everywhere the very

completeness of the impoverishment will be made a reason for the

enslavement; though the men who impoverished were the same who enslaved.

It is as if a highwayman not only took away a gentleman’s horse and all

his money, but then handed him over to the police for tramping without

visible means of subsistence. And the most monstrous feature in this

enormous meanness may be noted in the plutocratic appeal to science, or,

rather, to the pseudo-science that they call Eugenics.

The Eugenists get the ear of the humane but rather hazy cliques by

saying that the present “conditions” under which people work and breed

are bad for the race; but the modern mind will not generally stretch

beyond one step of reasoning, and the consequence which appears to

follow on the consideration of these “conditions” is by no means what

would originally have been expected. If somebody says: “A rickety cradle

may mean a rickety baby,” the natural deduction, one would think, would

be to give the people a good cradle, or give them money enough to buy

one. But that means higher wages and greater equalisation of wealth; and

the plutocratic scientist, with a slightly troubled expression, turns

his eyes and pince-nez in another direction. Reduced to brutal terms of

truth, his difficulty is this and simply this: More food, leisure, and

money for the workman would mean a better workman, better even from the

point of view of anyone for whom he worked. But more food, leisure, and

money would also mean a more independent workman. A house with a decent

fire and a full pantry would be a better house to make a chair or mend

a clock in, even from the customer’s point of view, than a hovel with a

leaky roof and a cold hearth. But a house with a decent fire and a full

pantry would also be a better house in which to refuse to make a chair

or mend a clock—a much better house to do nothing in—and doing nothing

is sometimes one of the highest of the duties of man. All but the

hard-hearted must be torn with pity for this pathetic dilemma of the

rich man, who has to keep the poor man just stout enough to do the work

and just thin enough to have to do it. As he stood gazing at the leaky

roof and the rickety cradle in a pensive manner, there one day came into

his mind a new and curious idea—one of the most strange, simple, and

horrible ideas that have ever risen from the deep pit of original sin.

The roof could not be mended, or, at least, it could not be mended much,

without upsetting the capitalist balance, or, rather, disproportion in

society; for a man with a roof is a man with a house, and to that extent

his house is his castle. The cradle could not be made to rock easier,

or, at least, not much easier, without strengthening the hands of the

poor household, for the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world—to

that extent. But it occurred to the capitalist that there was one sort

of furniture in the house that could be altered. The husband and wife

could be altered. Birth costs nothing, except in pain and valour and

such old-fashioned things; and the merchant need pay no more for mating

a strong miner to a healthy fishwife than he pays when the miner mates

himself with a less robust female whom he has the sentimentality to

prefer. Thus it might be possible, by keeping on certain broad lines

of heredity, to have some physical improvement without any moral,

political, or social improvement. It might be possible to keep a

supply of strong and healthy slaves without coddling them with decent

conditions. As the mill-owners use the wind and the water to drive their

mills, they would use this natural force as something even cheaper; and

turn their wheels by diverting from its channel the blood of a man in

his youth. That is what Eugenics means; and that is all that it means.

Of the moral state of those who think of such things it does not become

us to speak. The practical question is rather the intellectual one:

of whether their calculations are well founded, and whether the men

of science can or will guarantee them any such physical certainties.

Fortunately, it becomes clearer every day that they are, scientifically

speaking, building on the shifting sand. The theory of breeding slaves

breaks down through what a democrat calls the equality of men, but which

even an oligarchist will find himself forced to call the similarity of

men. That is, that though it is not true that all men are normal, it is

overwhelmingly certain that most men are normal. All the common Eugenic

arguments are drawn from extreme cases, which, even if human honour

and laughter allowed of their being eliminated, would not by their

elimination greatly affect the mass. For the rest, there remains the

enormous weakness in Eugenics, that if ordinary men’s judgment or

liberty is to be discounted in relation to heredity, the judgment of

the judges must be discounted in relation to their heredity. The Eugenic

professor may or may not succeed in choosing a baby’s parents; it is

quite certain that he cannot succeed in choosing his own parents. All

his thoughts, including his Eugenic thoughts, are, by the very principle

of those thoughts, flowing from a doubtful or tainted source. In short,

we should need a perfectly Wise Man to do the thing at all. And if he

were a Wise Man he would not do it.

VII. THE EVOLUTION OF THE PRISON

I have never understood why it is that those who talk most about

evolution, and talk it in the very age of fashionable evolutionism, do

not see the one way in which evolution really does apply to our modern

difficulty. There is, of course, an element of evolutionism in the

universe; and I know no religion or philosophy that ever entirely

ignored it. Evolution, popularly speaking, is that which happens to

unconscious things. They grow unconsciously; or fade unconsciously; or

rather, some parts of them grow and some parts of them fade; and at any

given moment there is almost always some presence of the fading thing,

and some incompleteness in the growing one. Thus, if I went to sleep

for a hundred years, like the Sleeping Beauty (I wish I could), I should

grow a beard—unlike the Sleeping Beauty. And just as I should grow

hair if I were asleep, I should grow grass if I were dead. Those whose

religion it was that God was asleep were perpetually impressed

and affected by the fact that he had a long beard. And those whose

philosophy it is that the universe is dead from the beginning (being

the grave of nobody in particular) think that is the way that grass can

grow. In any case, these developments only occur with dead or dreaming

things. What happens when everyone is asleep is called Evolution. What

happens when everyone is awake is called Revolution.

There was once an honest man, whose name I never knew, but whose face

I can almost see (it is framed in Victorian whiskers and fixed in a

Victorian neck-cloth), who was balancing the achievements of France and

England in civilisation and social efficiencies. And when he came to the

religious aspect he said that there were more stone and brick churches

used in France; but, on the other hand, there are more sects in England.

Whether such a lively disintegration is a proof of vitality in any

valuable sense I have always doubted. The sun may breed maggots in a

dead dog; but it is essential for such a liberation of life that the dog

should be unconscious or (to say the least of it) absent-minded. Broadly

speaking, you may call the thing corruption, if you happen to like dogs.

You may call it evolution, if you happen to like maggots. In either

case, it is what happens to things if you leave them alone.

The Evolutionists’ Error

Now, the modern Evolutionists have made no real use of the idea of

evolution, especially in the matter of social prediction. They always

fall into what is (from their logical point of view) the error of

supposing that evolution knows what it is doing. They predict the State

of the future as a fruit rounded and polished. But the whole point of

evolution (the only point there is in it) is that no State will ever be

rounded and polished, because it will always contain some organs that

outlived their use, and some that have not yet fully found theirs. If we

wish to prophesy what will happen, we must imagine things now moderate

grown enormous; things now local grown universal; things now promising

grown triumphant; primroses bigger than sunflowers, and sparrows

stalking about like flamingoes.

In other words, we must ask what modern institution has a future before

it? What modern institution may have swollen to six times its present

size in the social heat and growth of the future? I do not think the

Garden City will grow: but of that I may speak in my next and last

article of this series. I do not think even the ordinary Elementary

School, with its compulsory education, will grow. Too many unlettered

people hate the teacher for teaching; and too many lettered people

hate the teacher for not teaching. The Garden City will not bear much

blossom; the young idea will not shoot, unless it shoots the teacher.

But the one flowering tree on the estate, the one natural expansion

which I think will expand, is the institution we call the Prison.

Prisons for All

If the capitalists are allowed to erect their constructive capitalist

community, I speak quite seriously when I say that I think Prison will

become an almost universal experience. It will not necessarily be a

cruel or shameful experience: on these points (I concede certainly for

the present purpose of debate) it may be a vastly improved experience.

The conditions in the prison, very possibly, will be made more humane.

But the prison will be made more humane only in order to contain more of

humanity. I think little of the judgment and sense of humour of any man

who can have watched recent police trials without realising that it is

no longer a question of whether the law has been broken by a crime; but,

now, solely a question of whether the situation could be mended by an

imprisonment. It was so with Tom Mann; it was so with Larkin; it was so

with the poor atheist who was kept in gaol for saying something he

had been acquitted of saying: it is so in such cases day by day. We no

longer lock a man up for doing something; we lock him up in the hope

of his doing nothing. Given this principle, it is evidently possible

to make the mere conditions of punishment more moderate, or—(more

probably) more secret. There may really be more mercy in the Prison,

on condition that there is less justice in the Court. I should not be

surprised if, before we are done with all this, a man was allowed to

smoke in prison, on condition, of course, that he had been put in prison

for smoking.

Now that is the process which, in the absence of democratic protest,

will certainly proceed, will increase and multiply and replenish the

earth and subdue it. Prison may even lose its disgrace for a little

time: it will be difficult to make it disgraceful when men like Larkin

can be imprisoned for no reason at all, just as his celebrated ancestor

was hanged for no reason at all. But capitalist society, which naturally

does not know the meaning of honour, cannot know the meaning of

disgrace: and it will still go on imprisoning for no reason at all. Or

rather for that rather simple reason that makes a cat spring or a rat

run away.

It matters little whether our masters stoop to state the matter in the

form that every prison should be a school; or in the more candid form

that every school should be a prison. They have already fulfilled their

servile principle in the case of the schools. Everyone goes to the

Elementary Schools except the few people who tell them to go there. I

prophesy that (unless our revolt succeeds) nearly everyone will be going

to Prison, with a precisely similar patience.

VIII. THE LASH FOR LABOUR

If I were to prophesy that two hundred years hence a grocer would have

the right and habit of beating the grocer’s assistant with a stick, or

that shop girls might be flogged, as they already can be fined, many

would regard it as rather a rash remark. It would be a rash remark.

Prophecy is always unreliable; unless we except the kind which is

avowedly irrational, mystical and supernatural prophecy. But relatively

to nearly all the other prophecies that are being made around me to-day,

I should say my prediction stood an exceptionally good chance. In short,

I think the grocer with the stick is a figure we are far more likely to

see than the Superman or the Samurai, or the True Model Employer, or the

Perfect Fabian Official, or the citizen of the Collectivist State. And

it is best for us to see the full ugliness of the transformation which

is passing over our Society in some such abrupt and even grotesque image

at the end of it. The beginnings of a decline, in every age of history,

have always had the appearance of being reforms. Nero not only fiddled

while Rome was burning, but he probably really paid more attention to

the fiddle than to the fire. The Roi Soleil, like many other soleils,

was most splendid to all appearance a little before sunset. And if I

ask myself what will be the ultimate and final fruit of all our

social reforms, garden cities, model employers, insurances, exchanges,

arbitration courts, and so on, then, I say, quite seriously, “I think it

will be labour under the lash.”

The Sultan and the Sack

Let us arrange in some order a number of converging considerations that

all point in this direction. (1) It is broadly true, no doubt, that the

weapon of the employer has hitherto been the threat of dismissal, that

is, the threat of enforced starvation. He is a Sultan who need not order

the bastinado, so long as he can order the sack. But there are not a few

signs that this weapon is not quite so convenient and flexible a one

as his increasing rapacities require. The fact of the introduction of

fines, secretly or openly, in many shops and factories, proves that it

is convenient for the capitalists to have some temporary and adjustable

form of punishment besides the final punishment of pure ruin. Nor is it

difficult to see the commonsense of this from their wholly inhuman

point of view. The act of sacking a man is attended with the same

disadvantages as the act of shooting a man: one of which is that you can

get no more out of him. It is, I am told, distinctly annoying to blow a

fellow creature’s brains out with a revolver and then suddenly remember

that he was the only person who knew where to get the best Russian

cigarettes. So our Sultan, who is the orderer of the sack, is also the

bearer of the bow-string. A school in which there was no punishment,

except expulsion, would be a school in which it would be very difficult

to keep proper discipline; and the sort of discipline on which the

reformed capitalism will insist will be all of the type which in free

nations is imposed only on children. Such a school would probably be in

a chronic condition of breaking up for the holidays. And the reasons

for the insufficiency of this extreme instrument are also varied and

evident. The materialistic Sociologists, who talk about the survival of

the fittest and the weakest going to the wall (and whose way of looking

at the world is to put on the latest and most powerful scientific

spectacles, and then shut their eyes), frequently talk as if a

workman were simply efficient or non-efficient, as if a criminal were

reclaimable or irreclaimable. The employers have sense enough at least

to know better than that. They can see that a servant may be useful in

one way and exasperating in another; that he may be bad in one part of

his work and good in another; that he may be occasionally drunk and yet

generally indispensable. Just as a practical school-master would know

that a schoolboy can be at once the plague and the pride of the school.

Under these circumstances small and varying penalties are obviously the

most convenient things for the person keeping order; an underling can be

punished for coming late, and yet do useful work when he comes. It will

be possible to give a rap over the knuckles without wholly cutting

off the right hand that has offended. Under these circumstances the

employers have naturally resorted to fines. But there is a further

ground for believing that the process will go beyond fines before it is

completed.

(2) The fine is based on the old European idea that everybody possesses

private property in some reasonable degree; but not only is this not

true to-day, but it is not being made any truer, even by those who

honestly believe that they are mending matters. The great employers will

often do something towards improving what they call the “conditions”

of their workers; but a worker might have his conditions as carefully

arranged as a racehorse has, and still have no more personal property

than a racehorse. If you take an average poor seamstress or factory

girl, you will find that the power of chastising her through her

property has very considerable limits; it is almost as hard for the

employer of labour to tax her for punishment as it is for the Chancellor

of the Exchequer to tax her for revenue. The next most obvious thing to

think of, of course, would be imprisonment, and that might be effective

enough under simpler conditions. An old-fashioned shopkeeper might have

locked up his apprentice in his coal-cellar; but his coal-cellar would

be a real, pitch dark coal-cellar, and the rest of his house would be a

real human house. Everybody (especially the apprentice) would see a most

perceptible difference between the two. But, as I pointed out in the

article before this, the whole tendency of the capitalist legislation

and experiment is to make imprisonment much more general and automatic,

while making it, or professing to make it, more humane. In other words,

the hygienic prison and the servile factory will become so uncommonly

like each other that the poor man will hardly know or care whether he

is at the moment expiating an offence or merely swelling a dividend. In

both places there will be the same sort of shiny tiles. In neither place

will there be any cell so unwholesome as a coal-cellar or so wholesome

as a home. The weapon of the prison, therefore, like the weapon of

the fine, will be found to have considerable limitations to its

effectiveness when employed against the wretched reduced citizen of our

day. Whether it be property or liberty you cannot take from him what he

has not got. You cannot imprison a slave, because you cannot enslave a

slave.

The Barbarous Revival

(3) Most people, on hearing the suggestion that it may come to corporal

punishment at last (as it did in every slave system I ever heard of,

including some that were generally kindly, and even successful), will

merely be struck with horror and incredulity, and feel that such a

barbarous revival is unthinkable in the modern atmosphere. How far it

will be, or need be, a revival of the actual images and methods of

ruder times I will discuss in a moment. But first, as another of the

converging lines tending to corporal punishment, consider this: that for

some reason or other the old full-blooded and masculine humanitarianism

in this matter has weakened and fallen silent; it has weakened and

fallen silent in a very curious manner, the precise reason for which I

do not altogether understand. I knew the average Liberal, the average

Nonconformist minister, the average Labour Member, the average

middle-class Socialist, were, with all their good qualities, very

deficient in what I consider a respect for the human soul. But I did

imagine that they had the ordinary modern respect for the human body.

The fact, however, is clear and incontrovertible. In spite of the horror

of all humane people, in spite of the hesitation even of our corrupt and

panic-stricken Parliament, measures can now be triumphantly passed for

spreading or increasing the use of physical torture, and for applying

it to the newest and vaguest categories of crime. Thirty or forty years

ago, nay, twenty years ago, when Mr. F. Hugh O’Donnell and others forced

a Liberal Government to drop the cat-o’-nine-tails like a scorpion, we

could have counted on a mass of honest hatred of such things. We cannot

count on it now.

(4) But lastly, it is not necessary that in the factories of the future

the institution of physical punishment should actually remind people of

the jambok or the knout. It could easily be developed out of the many

forms of physical discipline which are already used by employers on the

excuses of education or hygiene. Already in some factories girls are

obliged to swim whether they like it or not, or do gymnastics whether

they like it or not. By a simple extension of hours or complication of

exercises a pair of Swedish clubs could easily be so used as to leave

their victim as exhausted as one who had come off the rack. I think it

extremely likely that they will be.

IX. THE MASK OF SOCIALISM

The chief aim of all honest Socialists just now is to prevent the coming

of Socialism. I do not say it as a sneer, but, on the contrary, as a

compliment; a compliment to their political instinct and public spirit.

I admit it may be called an exaggeration; but there really is a sort of

sham Socialism that the modern politicians may quite possibly agree to

set up; if they do succeed in setting it up, the battle for the poor is

lost.

We must note, first of all, a general truth about the curious time we

live in. It will not be so difficult as some people may suppose to make

the Servile State look rather like Socialism, especially to the more

pedantic kind of Socialist. The reason is this. The old lucid and

trenchant expounder of Socialism, such as Blatchford or Fred Henderson,

always describes the economic power of the plutocrats as consisting in

private property. Of course, in a sense, this is quite true; though they

too often miss the point that private property, as such, is not the same

as property confined to the few. But the truth is that the situation has

grown much more subtle; perhaps too subtle, not to say too insane, for

straight-thinking theorists like Blatchford. The rich man to-day does

not only rule by using private property; he also rules by treating

public property as if it were private property. A man like Lord Murray

pulled the strings, especially the purse-strings; but the whole point of

his position was that all sorts of strings had got entangled. The secret

strength of the money he held did not lie merely in the fact that it was

his money. It lay precisely in the fact that nobody had any clear idea

of whether it was his money, or his successor’s money, or his brother’s

money, or the Marconi Company’s money, or the Liberal Party’s money,

or the English Nation’s money. It was buried treasure; but it was not

private property. It was the acme of plutocracy because it was not

private property. Now, by following this precedent, this unprincipled

vagueness about official and unofficial moneys by the cheerful habit of

always mixing up the money in the pocket with the money in the till, it

would be quite possible to keep the rich as rich as ever in practice,

though they might have suffered confiscation in theory. Mr. Lloyd George

has four hundred a year as an M. P.; but he not only gets much more as a

Minister, but he might at any time get immeasurably more by speculating

on State secrets that are necessarily known to him. Some say that he has

even attempted something of the kind. Now, it would be quite possible to

cut Mr. George down, not to four hundred a year, but to fourpence a

day; and still leave him all these other and enormous financial

superiorities. It must be remembered that a Socialist State, in any way

resembling a modern State, must, however egalitarian it may be, have the

handling of huge sums, and the enjoyment of large conveniences; it is

not improbable that the same men will handle and enjoy in much the same

manner, though in theory they are doing it as instruments, and not as

individuals. For instance, the Prime Minister has a private house, which

is also (I grieve to inform that eminent Puritan) a public house. It

is supposed to be a sort of Government office; though people do not

generally give children’s parties, or go to bed in a Government office.

I do not know where Mr. Herbert Samuel lives; but I have no doubt he

does himself well in the matter of decoration and furniture. On the

existing official parallel there is no need to move any of these

things in order to Socialise them. There is no need to withdraw one

diamond-headed nail from the carpet; or one golden teaspoon from the

tray. It is only necessary to call it an official residence, like

10 Downing-street. I think it is not at all improbable that this

Plutocracy, pretending to be a Bureaucracy, will be attempted or

achieved. Our wealthy rulers will be in the position which grumblers

in the world of sport sometimes attribute to some of the “gentlemen”

players. They assert that some of these are paid like any professional;

only their pay is called their expenses. This system might run side by

side with a theory of equal wages, as absolute as that once laid down by

Mr. Bernard Shaw. By the theory of the State, Mr. Herbert Samuel and Mr.

Lloyd George might be humble citizens, drudging for their fourpence

a day; and no better off than porters and coal-heavers. If there were

presented to our mere senses what appeared to be the form of Mr. Herbert

Samuel in an astrakhan coat and a motor-car, we should find the record

of the expenditure (if we could find it at all) under the heading of

“Speed Limit Extension Enquiry Commission.” If it fell to our lot to

behold (with the eye of flesh) what seemed to be Mr. Lloyd George

lying in a hammock and smoking a costly cigar, we should know that the

expenditure would be divided between the “Condition of Rope and Netting

Investigation Department,” and the “State of Cuban Tobacco Trade:

Imperial Inspector’s Report.”

Such is the society I think they will build unless we can knock it down

as fast as they build it. Everything in it, tolerable or intolerable,

will have but one use; and that use what our ancestors used to

call usance or usury. Its art may be good or bad, but it will be an

advertisement for usurers; its literature may be good or bad, but it

will appeal to the patronage of usurers; its scientific selection will

select according to the needs of usurers; its religion will be just

charitable enough to pardon usurers; its penal system will be just cruel

enough to crush all the critics of usurers: the truth of it will be

Slavery: and the title of it may quite possibly be Socialism.

THE ESCAPE

 We watched you building, stone by stone,

 The well-washed cells and well-washed graves

 We shall inhabit but not own

 When Britons ever shall be slaves;

 The water's waiting in the trough,

 The tame oats sown are portioned free,

 There is Enough, and just Enough,

 And all is ready now but we.

 But you have not caught us yet, my lords,

 You have us still to get.

 A sorry army you'd have got,

 Its flags are rags that float and rot,

 Its drums are empty pan and pot,

 Its baggage is--an empty cot;

 But you have not caught us yet.

 A little; and we might have slipped

 When came your rumours and your sales

 And the foiled rich men, feeble-lipped,

 Said and unsaid their sorry tales;

 Great God!  It needs a bolder brow

 To keep ten sheep inside a pen,

 And we are sheep no longer now;

 You are but Masters.  We are Men.

 We give you all good thanks, my lords,

 We buy at easy price;

 Thanks for the thousands that you stole,

 The bribes by wire, the bets on coal,

 The knowledge of that naked whole

 That hath delivered our flesh and soul

 Out of your Paradise.

 We had held safe your parks; but when

 Men taunted you with bribe and fee,

 We only saw the Lord of Men

 Grin like an Ape and climb a tree;

 And humbly had we stood without

 Your princely barns; did we not see

 In pointed faces peering out

 What Rats now own the granary.

 It is too late, too late, my lords,

 We give you back your grace:

 You cannot with all cajoling

 Make the wet ditch, or winds that sting,

 Lost pride, or the pawned wedding rings,

 Or drink or Death a blacker thing

 Than a smile upon your face.

THE NEW RAID

The two kinds of social reform, one of which might conceivably free

us at last while the other would certainly enslave us forever, are

exhibited in an easy working model in the two efforts that have been

made for the soldiers’ wives—I mean the effort to increase their

allowance and the effort to curtail their alleged drinking. In the

preliminary consideration, at any rate, we must see the second question

as quite detached from our own sympathies on the special subject of

fermented liquor. It could be applied to any other pleasure or ornament

of life; it will be applied to every other pleasure and ornament of life

if the Capitalist campaign can succeed. The argument we know; but

it cannot be too often made clear. An employer, let us say, pays a

seamstress twopence a day, and she does not seem to thrive on it. So

little, perhaps, does she thrive on it that the employer has even some

difficulty in thriving upon her. There are only two things that he can

do, and the distinction between them cuts the whole social and political

world in two. It is a touchstone by which we can—not sometimes, but

always—distinguish economic equality from servile social reform. He can

give the girl some magnificent sum, such as sixpence a day, to do as she

likes with, and trust that her improved health and temper will work for

the benefit of his business. Or he may keep her to the original sum of a

shilling a week, but earmark each of the pennies to be used or not to

be used for a particular purpose. If she must not spend this penny on a

bunch of violets, or that penny on a novelette, or the other penny on

a toy for some baby, it is possible that she will concentrate her

expenditure more upon physical necessities, and so become, from the

employer’s point of view, a more efficient person. Without the trouble

of adding twopence to her wages, he has added twopenny-worth to her

food. In short, she has the holy satisfaction of being worth more

without being paid more.

This Capitalist is an ingenious person, and has many polished

characteristics; but I think the most singular thing about him is his

staggering lack of shame. Neither the hour of death nor the day of

reckoning, neither the tent of exile nor the house of mourning, neither

chivalry nor patriotism, neither womanhood nor widowhood, is safe at

this supreme moment from his dirty little expedient of dieting the

slave. As similar bullies, when they collect the slum rents, put a

foot in the open door, these are always ready to push in a muddy wedge

wherever there is a slit in a sundered household or a crack in a broken

heart. To a man of any manhood nothing can be conceived more loathsome

and sacrilegious than even so much as asking whether a woman who has

given up all she loved to death and the fatherland has or has not shown

some weakness in her seeking for self-comfort. I know not in which of

the two cases I should count myself the baser for inquiring—a case

where the charge was false or a case where it was true. But the

philanthropic employer of the sort I describe is not a man of any

manhood; in a sense he is not a man at all. He shows some consciousness

of the fact when he calls his workers “men” as distinct from masters. He

cannot comprehend the gallantry of costermongers or the delicacy that is

quite common among cabmen. He finds this social reform by half-rations

on the whole to his mercantile profit, and it will be hard to get him to

think of anything else.

But there are people assisting him, people like the Duchess of

Marlborough, who know not their right hand from their left, and to these

we may legitimately address our remonstrance and a resume of some of

the facts they do not know. The Duchess of Marlborough is, I believe,

an American, and this separates her from the problem in a special way,

because the drink question in America is entirely different from the

drink question in England. But I wish the Duchess of Marlborough would

pin up in her private study, side by side with the Declaration of

Independence, a document recording the following simple truths: (1)

Beer, which is largely drunk in public-houses, is not a spirit or a grog

or a cocktail or a drug. It is the common English liquid for quenching

the thirst; it is so still among innumerable gentlemen, and, until very

lately, was so among innumerable ladies. Most of us remember dames of

the last generation whose manners were fit for Versailles, and who drank

ale or Stout as a matter of course. Schoolboys drank ale as a matter of

course, and their schoolmasters gave it to them as a matter of course.

To tell a poor woman that she must not have any until half the day is

over is simply cracked, like telling a dog or a child that he must

not have water. (2) The public-house is not a secret rendezvous of bad

characters. It is the open and obvious place for a certain purpose,

which all men used for that purpose until the rich began to be snobs

and the poor to become slaves. One might as well warn people against

Willesden Junction. (3) Many poor people live in houses where they

cannot, without great preparation, offer hospitality. (4) The climate of

these picturesque islands does not favour conducting long conversations

with one’s oldest friends on an iron seat in the park. (5) Halfpast

eleven a.m. is not early in the day for a woman who gets up before six.

(6) The bodies and minds of these women belong to God and to themselves.

THE NEW NAME

Something has come into our community, which is strong enough to save

our community; but which has not yet got a name. Let no one fancy I

confess any unreality when I confess the namelessness. The morality

called Puritanism, the tendency called Liberalism, the reaction called

Tory Democracy, had not only long been powerful, but had practically

done most of their work, before these actual names were attached to

them. Nevertheless, I think it would be a good thing to have some

portable and practicable way of referring to those who think as we do

in our main concern. Which is, that men in England are ruled, at this

minute by the clock, by brutes who refuse them bread, by liars who

refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern, and therefore wish to

enslave.

Let me explain first why I am not satisfied with the word commonly used,

which I have often used myself; and which, in some contexts, is quite

the right word to use. I mean the word “rebel.” Passing over the fact

that many who understand the justice of our cause (as a great many at

the Universities) would still use the word “rebel” in its old and strict

sense as meaning only a disturber of just rule. I pass to a much more

practical point. The word “rebel” understates our cause. It is much too

mild; it lets our enemies off much too easily. There is a tradition in

all western life and letters of Prometheus defying the stars, of man

at war with the Universe, and dreaming what nature had never dared to

dream. All this is valuable in its place and proportion. But it has

nothing whatever to do with our ease; or rather it very much weakens it.

The plutocrats will be only too pleased if we profess to preach a new

morality; for they know jolly well that they have broken the old one.

They will be only too pleased to be able to say that we, by our own

confession, are merely restless and negative; that we are only what we

call rebels and they call cranks. But it is not true; and we must not

concede it to them for a moment. The model millionaire is more of a

crank than the Socialists; just as Nero was more of a crank than the

Christians. And avarice has gone mad in the governing class to-day, just

as lust went mad in the circle of Nero. By all the working and orthodox

standards of sanity, capitalism is insane. I should not say to Mr.

Rockefeller “I am a rebel.” I should say “I am a respectable man: and

you are not.”

Our Lawless Enemies

But the vital point is that the confession of mere rebellion softens

the startling lawlessness of our enemies. Suppose a publisher’s clerk

politely asked his employer for a rise in his salary; and, on being

refused, said he must leave the employment? Suppose the employer knocked

him down with a ruler, tied him up as a brown paper parcel, addressed

him (in a fine business hand) to the Governor of Rio Janeiro and then

asked the policeman to promise never to arrest him for what he had

done? That is a precise copy, in every legal and moral principle, of the

“deportation of the strikers.” They were assaulted and kidnapped for not

accepting a contract, and for nothing else; and the act was so avowedly

criminal that the law had to be altered afterwards to cover the crime.

Now suppose some postal official, between here and Rio Janeiro, had

noticed a faint kicking inside the brown paper parcel, and had attempted

to ascertain the cause. And suppose the clerk could only explain, in a

muffled voice through the brown paper, that he was by constitution and

temperament a Rebel. Don’t you see that he would be rather understating

his case? Don’t you see he would be bearing his injuries much too

meekly? They might take him out of the parcel; but they would very

possibly put him into a mad-house instead. Symbolically speaking, that

is what they would like to do with us. Symbolically speaking, the dirty

misers who rule us will put us in a mad-house—unless we can put them

there.

Or suppose a bank cashier were admittedly allowed to take the money out

of the till, and put it loose in his pocket, more or less mixed up with

his own money; afterwards laying some of both (at different odds) on

“Blue Murder” for the Derby. Suppose when some depositor asked mildly

what day the accountants came, he smote that astonished inquirer on the

nose, crying: “Slanderer! Mud-slinger!” and suppose he then resigned his

position. Suppose no books were shown. Suppose when the new cashier came

to be initiated into his duties, the old cashier did not tell him about

the money, but confided it to the honour and delicacy of his own maiden

aunt at Cricklewood. Suppose he then went off in a yacht to visit

the whale fisheries of the North Sea. Well, in every moral and legal

principle, that is a precise account of the dealings with the Party

Funds. But what would the banker say? What would the clients say? One

thing, I think, I can venture to promise; the banker would not march up

and down the office exclaiming in rapture, “I’m a rebel! That’s what I

am, a rebel!” And if he said to the first indignant depositor “You are

a rebel,” I fear the depositor might answer, “You are a robber.” We have

no need to elaborate arguments for breaking the law. The capitalists

have broken the law. We have no need of further moralities. They have

broken their own morality. It is as if you were to run down the street

shouting, “Communism! Communism! Share! Share!” after a man who had run

away with your watch.

We want a term that will tell everybody that there is, by the common

standard, frank fraud and cruelty pushed to their fierce extreme; and

that we are fighting THEM. We are not in a state of “divine discontent”;

we are in an entirely human and entirely reasonable rage. We say we have

been swindled and oppressed, and we are quite ready and able to prove it

before any tribunal that allows us to call a swindler a swindler. It is

the protection of the present system that most of its tribunals do not.

I cannot at the moment think of any party name that would particularly

distinguish us from our more powerful and prosperous opponents, unless

it were the name the old Jacobites gave themselves; the Honest Party.

Captured Our Standards

I think it is plain that for the purpose of facing these new and

infamous modern facts, we cannot, with any safety, depend on any of the

old nineteenth century names; Socialist, or Communist, or Radical, or

Liberal, or Labour. They are all honourable names; they all stand, or

stood, for things in which we may still believe; we can still apply them

to other problems; but not to this one. We have no longer a monopoly

of these names. Let it be understood that I am not speaking here of the

philosophical problem of their meaning, but of the practical problem of

their use. When I called myself a Radical I knew Mr. Balfour would not

call himself a Radical; therefore there was some use in the word. When

I called myself a Socialist I knew Lord Penrhyn would not call himself

a Socialist; therefore there was some use in the word. But the

capitalists, in that aggressive march which is the main fact of our

time, have captured our standards, both in the military and philosophic

sense of the word. And it is useless for us to march under colours which

they can carry as well as we.

Do you believe in Democracy? The devils also believe and tremble. Do you

believe in Trades Unionism? The Labour Members also believe; and tremble

like a falling teetotum. Do you believe in the State? The Samuels also

believe, and grin. Do you believe in the centralisation of Empire? So

did Beit. Do you believe in the decentralisation of Empire? So does

Albu. Do you believe in the brotherhood of men: and do you, dear

brethren, believe that Brother Arthur Henderson does not? Do you cry,

“The world for the workers!” and do you imagine Philip Snowden would

not? What we need is a name that shall declare, not that the modern

treason and tyranny are bad, but that they are quite literally,

intolerable: and that we mean to act accordingly. I really think “the

Limits” would be as good a name as any. But, anyhow, something is born

among us that is as strong as an infant Hercules: and it is part of

my prejudices to want it christened. I advertise for godfathers and

godmothers.

A WORKMAN’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND

A thing which does not exist and which is very much wanted is “A

Working-Man’s History of England.” I do not mean a history written

for working men (there are whole dustbins of them), I mean a history,

written by working men or from the working men’s standpoint. I wish five

generations of a fisher’s or a miner’s family could incarnate themselves

in one man and tell the story.

It is impossible to ignore altogether any comment coming from so eminent

a literary artist as Mr. Laurence Housman, but I do not deal here so

specially with his well known conviction about Votes for Women, as with

another idea which is, I think, rather at the back of it, if not with

him at least with others; and which concerns this matter of the true

story of England. For the true story is so entirely different from the

false official story that the official classes tell that by this time

the working class itself has largely forgotten its own experience.

Either story can be quite logically linked up with Female Suffrage,

which, therefore, I leave where it is for the moment; merely confessing

that, so long as we get hold of the right story and not the wrong story,

it seems to me a matter of secondary importance whether we link it up

with Female Suffrage or not.

Now the ordinary version of recent English history that most moderately

educated people have absorbed from childhood is something like this.

That we emerged slowly from a semi-barbarism in which all the power

and wealth were in the hands of Kings and a few nobles; that the King’s

power was broken first and then in due time that of the nobles, that

this piece-meal improvement was brought about by one class after

another waking up to a sense of citizenship and demanding a place in

the national councils, frequently by riot or violence; and that in

consequence of such menacing popular action, the franchise was granted

to one class after another and used more and more to improve the social

conditions of those classes, until we practically became a democracy,

save for such exceptions as that of the women. I do not think anyone

will deny that something like that is the general idea of the educated

man who reads a newspaper and of the newspaper that he reads. That

is the view current at public schools and colleges; it is part of the

culture of all the classes that count for much in government; and there

is not one word of truth in it from beginning to end.

That Great Reform Bill

Wealth and political power were very much more popularly distributed

in the Middle Ages than they are now; but we will pass all that and

consider recent history. The franchise has never been largely and

liberally granted in England; half the males have no vote and are not

likely to get one. It was never granted in reply to pressure from

awakened sections of the democracy; in every case there was a perfectly

clear motive for granting it solely for the convenience of the

aristocrats. The Great Reform Bill was not passed in response to such

riots as that which destroyed a Castle; nor did the men who destroyed

the Castle get any advantage whatever out of the Great Reform Bill. The

Great Reform Bill was passed in order to seal an alliance between the

landed aristocrats and the rich manufacturers of the north (an alliance

that rules us still); and the chief object of that alliance was to

prevent the English populace getting any political power in the

general excitement after the French Revolution. No one can read

Macaulay’s speech on the Chartists, for instance, and not see that this

is so. Disraeli’s further extension of the suffrage was not effected

by the intellectual vivacity and pure republican theory of the

mid-Victorian agricultural labourer; it was effected by a politician

who saw an opportunity to dish the Whigs, and guessed that certain

orthodoxies in the more prosperous artisan might yet give him a balance

against the commercial Radicals. And while this very thin game of

wire-pulling with the mere abstraction of the vote was being worked

entirely by the oligarchs and entirely in their interests, the solid and

real thing that was going on was the steady despoiling of the poor

of all power or wealth, until they find themselves to-day upon the

threshold of slavery. That is The Working Man’s History of England.

Now, as I have said, I care comparatively little what is done with the

mere voting part of the matter, so long as it is not claimed in such

a way as to allow the plutocrat to escape his responsibility for

his crimes, by pretending to be much more progressive, or much more

susceptible to popular protest, than he ever has been. And there is this

danger in many of those who have answered me. One of them, for

instance, says that women have been forced into their present industrial

situations by the same iron economic laws that have compelled men. I say

that men have not been compelled by iron economic laws, but in the main

by the coarse and Christless cynicism of other men. But, of course,

this way of talking is exactly in accordance with the fashionable

and official version of English history. Thus, you will read that the

monasteries, places where men of the poorest origin could be powerful,

grew corrupt and gradually decayed. Or you will read that the mediaeval

guilds of free workmen yielded at last to an inevitable economic law.

You will read this; and you will be reading lies. They might as well say

that Julius Caesar gradually decayed at the foot of Pompey’s statue. You

might as well say that Abraham Lincoln yielded at last to an inevitable

economic law. The free mediaeval guilds did not decay; they were

murdered. Solid men with solid guns and halberds, armed with lawful

warrants from living statesmen broke up their corporations and took away

their hard cash from them. In the same way the people in Cradley Heath

are no more victims of a necessary economic law than the people in

Putumayo. They are victims of a very terrible creature, of whose sins

much has been said since the beginning of the world; and of whom it was

said of old, “Let us fall into the hands of God, for His mercies are

great; but let us not fall into the hands of Man.”

The Capitalist Is in the Dock

Now it is this offering of a false economic excuse for the sweater that

is the danger in perpetually saying that the poor woman will use the

vote and that the poor man has not used it. The poor man is prevented

from using it; prevented by the rich man, and the poor woman would be

prevented in exactly the same gross and stringent style. I do not deny,

of course, that there is something in the English temperament, and in

the heritage of the last few centuries that makes the English workman

more tolerant of wrong than most foreign workmen would be. But this only

slightly modifies the main fact of the moral responsibility. To take an

imperfect parallel, if we said that negro slaves would have rebelled

if negroes had been more intelligent, we should be saying what is

reasonable. But if we were to say that it could by any possibility be

represented as being the negro’s fault that he was at that moment

in America and not in Africa, we should be saying what is frankly

unreasonable. It is every bit as unreasonable to say the mere supineness

of the English workmen has put them in the capitalist slave-yard. The

capitalist has put them in the capitalist slaveyard; and very cunning

smiths have hammered the chains. It is just this creative criminality in

the authors of the system that we must not allow to be slurred over. The

capitalist is in the dock to-day; and so far as I at least can prevent

him, he shall not get out of it.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE IRISH

It will be long before the poison of the Party System is worked out

of the body politic. Some of its most indirect effects are the most

dangerous. One that is very dangerous just now is this: that for most

Englishmen the Party System falsifies history, and especially the

history of revolutions. It falsifies history because it simplifies

history. It paints everything either Blue or Buff in the style of its

own silly circus politics: while a real revolution has as many colours

as the sunrise—or the end of the world. And if we do not get rid of

this error we shall make very bad blunders about the real revolution

which seems to grow more and more probable, especially among the Irish.

And any human familiarity with history will teach a man this first of

all: that Party practically does not exist in a real revolution. It is a

game for quiet times.

If you take a boy who has been to one of those big private schools which

are falsely called the Public Schools, and another boy who has been to

one of those large public schools which are falsely called the Board

Schools, you will find some differences between the two, chiefly a

difference in the management of the voice. But you will find they

are both English in a special way, and that their education has been

essentially the same. They are ignorant on the same subjects. They have

never heard of the same plain facts. They have been taught the wrong

answer to the same confusing question. There is one fundamental element

in the attitude of the Eton master talking about “playing the game,”

and the elementary teacher training gutter-snipes to sing, “What is the

Meaning of Empire Day?” And the name of that element is “unhistoric.” It

knows nothing really about England, still less about Ireland or France,

and, least of all, of course, about anything like the French Revolution.

Revolution by Snap Division

Now what general notion does the ordinary English boy, thus taught to

utter one ignorance in one of two accents, get and keep through life

about the French Revolution? It is the notion of the English House of

Commons with an enormous Radical majority on one side of the table and

a small Tory minority on the other; the majority voting solid for a

Republic, the minority voting solid for a Monarchy; two teams tramping

through two lobbies with no difference between their methods and ours,

except that (owing to some habit peculiar to Gaul) the brief intervals

were brightened by a riot or a massacre, instead of by a whisky and soda

and a Marconi tip. Novels are much more reliable than histories in such

matters. For though an English novel about France does not tell the

truth about France, it does tell the truth about England; and more than

half the histories never tell the truth about anything. And popular

fiction, I think, bears witness to the general English impression. The

French Revolution is a snap division with an unusual turnover of votes.

On the one side stand a king and queen who are good but weak, surrounded

by nobles with rapiers drawn; some of whom are good, many of whom are

wicked, all of whom are good-looking. Against these there is a formless

mob of human beings, wearing red caps and seemingly insane, who all

blindly follow ruffians who are also rhetoricians; some of whom die

repentant and others unrepentant towards the end of the fourth act.

The leaders of this boiling mass of all men melted into one are called

Mirabeau, Robespierre, Danton, Marat, and so on. And it is conceded that

their united frenzy may have been forced on them by the evils of the old

regime.

That, I think, is the commonest English view of the French Revolution;

and it will not survive the reading of two pages of any real speech or

letter of the period. These human beings were human; varied, complex and

inconsistent. But the rich Englishman, ignorant of revolutions, would

hardly believe you if you told him some of the common human subtleties

of the case. Tell him that Robespierre threw the red cap in the dirt in

disgust, while the king had worn it with a broad grin, so to speak; tell

him that Danton, the fierce founder of the Republic of the Terror, said

quite sincerely to a noble, “I am more monarchist than you;” tell him

that the Terror really seems to have been brought to an end chiefly by

the efforts of people who particularly wanted to go on with it—and he

will not believe these things. He will not believe them because he has

no humility, and therefore no realism. He has never been inside himself;

and so could never be inside another man. The truth is that in the

French affair everybody occupied an individual position. Every man

talked sincerely, if not because he was sincere, then because he was

angry. Robespierre talked even more about God than about the Republic

because he cared even more about God than about the Republic. Danton

talked even more about France than about the Republic because he cared

even more about France than about the Republic. Marat talked more about

Humanity than either, because that physician (though himself somewhat

needing a physician) really cared about it. The nobles were divided,

each man from the next. The attitude of the king was quite different

from the attitude of the queen; certainly much more different than any

differences between our Liberals and Tories for the last twenty years.

And it will sadden some of my friends to remember that it was the king

who was the Liberal and the queen who was the Tory. There were not two

people, I think, in that most practical crisis who stood in precisely

the same attitude towards the situation. And that is why, between them,

they saved Europe. It is when you really perceive the unity of mankind

that you really perceive its variety. It is not a flippancy, it is a

very sacred truth, to say that when men really understand that they are

brothers they instantly begin to fight.

The Revival of Reality

Now these things are repeating themselves with an enormous reality in

the Irish Revolution. You will not be able to make a Party System out of

the matter. Everybody is in revolt; therefore everybody is telling the

truth. The Nationalists will go on caring most for the nation, as Danton

and the defenders of the frontier went on caring most for the nation.

The priests will go on caring most for religion, as Robespierre went on

caring most for religion. The Socialists will go on caring most for the

cure of physical suffering, as Marat went on caring most for it. It is

out of these real differences that real things can be made, such as the

modern French democracy. For by such tenacity everyone sees at last that

there is something in the other person’s position. And those drilled in

party discipline see nothing either past or present. And where there is

nothing there is Satan.

For a long time past in our politics there has not only been no real

battle, but no real bargain. No two men have bargained as Gladstone and

Parnell bargained—each knowing the other to be a power. But in real

revolutions men discover that no one man can really agree with another

man until he has disagreed with him.

LIBERALISM: A SAMPLE

There is a certain daily paper in England towards which I feel very much

as Tom Pinch felt towards Mr. Pecksniff immediately after he had

found him out. The war upon Dickens was part of the general war on all

democrats, about the eighties and nineties, which ushered in the brazen

plutocracy of to-day. And one of the things that it was fashionable to

say of Dickens in drawing-rooms was that he had no subtlety, and could

not describe a complex frame of mind. Like most other things that are

said in drawing-rooms, it was a lie. Dickens was a very unequal writer,

and his successes alternate with his failures; but his successes

are subtle quite as often as they are simple. Thus, to take “Martin

Chuzzlewit” alone, I should call the joke about the Lord No-zoo a simple

joke: but I should call the joke about Mrs. Todgers’s vision of a wooden

leg a subtle joke. And no frame of mind was ever so self-contradictory

and yet so realistic as that which Dickens describes when he says, in

effect, that, though Pinch knew now that there had never been such a

person as Pecksniff, in his ideal sense, he could not bring himself

to insult the very face and form that had contained the legend. The

parallel with Liberal journalism is not perfect; because it was once

honest; and Pecksniff presumably never was. And even when I come to feel

a final incompatibility of temper, Pecksniff was not so Pecksniffian as

he has since become. But the comparison is complete in so far as I share

all the reluctance of Mr. Pinch. Some old heathen king was advised by

one of the Celtic saints, I think, to burn what he had adored and adore

what he had burnt. I am quite ready, if anyone will prove I was wrong,

to adore what I have burnt; but I do really feel an unwillingness

verging upon weakness to burning what I have adored. I think it is a

weakness to be overcome in times as bad as these, when (as Mr. Orage

wrote with something like splendid common sense the other day) there is

such a lot to do and so few people who will do it. So I will devote

this article to considering one case of the astounding baseness to which

Liberal journalism has sunk.

Mental Breakdown in Fleet Street

One of the two or three streaks of light on our horizon can be perceived

in this: that the moral breakdown of these papers has been accompanied

by a mental breakdown also. The contemporary official paper, like the

“Daily News” or the “Daily Chronicle” (I mean in so far as it deals with

politics), simply cannot argue; and simply does not pretend to argue. It

considers the solution which it imagines that wealthy people want, and

it signifies the same in the usual manner; which is not by holding

up its hand, but by falling on its face. But there is no more curious

quality in its degradation than a sort of carelessness, at once of

hurry and fatigue, with which it flings down its argument—or rather its

refusal to argue. It does not even write sophistry: it writes anything.

It does not so much poison the reader’s mind as simply assume that the

reader hasn’t got one. For instance, one of these papers printed an

article on Sir Stuart Samuel, who, having broken the great Liberal

statute against corruption, will actually, perhaps, be asked to pay his

own fine—in spite of the fact that he can well afford to do so. The

article says, if I remember aright, that the decision will cause general

surprise and some indignation. That any modern Government making a very

rich capitalist obey the law will cause general surprise, may be true.

Whether it will cause general indignation rather depends on whether

our social intercourse is entirely confined to Park Lane, or any such

pigsties built of gold. But the journalist proceeds to say, his neck

rising higher and higher out of his collar, and his hair rising higher

and higher on his head, in short, his resemblance to the Dickens’

original increasing every instant, that he does not mean that the law

against corruption should be less stringent, but that the burden should

be borne by the whole community. This may mean that whenever a rich man

breaks the law, all the poor men ought to be made to pay his fine. But

I will suppose a slightly less insane meaning. I will suppose it means

that the whole power of the commonwealth should be used to prosecute an

offender of this kind. That, of course, can only mean that the matter

will be decided by that instrument which still pretends to represent

the whole power of the commonwealth. In other words, the Government will

judge the Government.

Now this is a perfectly plain piece of brute logic. We need not go into

the other delicious things in the article, as when it says that “in old

times Parliament had to be protected against Royal invasion by the man

in the street.” Parliament has to be protected now against the man

in the street. Parliament is simply the most detested and the most

detestable of all our national institutions: all that is evident enough.

What is interesting is the blank and staring fallacy of the attempted

reply.

When the Journalist Is Ruined

A long while ago, before all the Liberals died, a Liberal introduced

a Bill to prevent Parliament being merely packed with the slaves of

financial interests. For that purpose he established the excellent

democratic principle that the private citizen, as such, might protest

against public corruption. He was called the Common Informer. I

believe the miserable party papers are really reduced to playing on the

degradation of the two words in modern language. Now the word “common”

in “Common Informer” means exactly what it means in “common sense” or

“Book of Common Prayer,” or (above all) in “House of Commons.” It

does not mean anything low or vulgar; any more than they do. The only

difference is that the House of Commons really is low and vulgar; and

the Common Informer isn’t. It is just the same with the word “Informer.”

It does not mean spy or sneak. It means one who gives information. It

means what “journalist” ought to mean. The only difference is that the

Common Informer may be paid if he tells the truth. The common journalist

will be ruined if he does.

Now the quite plain point before the party journalist is this: If

he really means that a corrupt bargain between a Government and a

contractor ought to be judged by public opinion, he must (nowadays) mean

Parliament; that is, the caucus that controls Parliament. And he must

decide between one of two views. Either he means that there can be no

such thing as a corrupt Government. Or he means that it is one of the

characteristic qualities of a corrupt Government to denounce its own

corruption. I laugh; and I leave him his choice.

THE FATIGUE OF FLEET STREET

Why is the modern party political journalism so bad? It is worse even

than it intends to be. It praises its preposterous party leaders through

thick and thin; but it somehow succeeds in making them look greater

fools than they are. This clumsiness clings even to the photographs

of public men, as they are snapshotted at public meetings. A sensitive

politician (if there is such a thing) would, I should think, want to

murder the man who snapshots him at those moments. For our general

impression of a man’s gesture or play of feature is made up of a series

of vanishing instants, at any one of which he may look worse than our

general impression records. Mr. Augustine Birrell may have made quite a

sensible and amusing speech, in the course of which his audience would

hardly have noticed that he resettled his necktie. Snapshot him, and

he appears as convulsively clutching his throat in the agonies of

strangulation, and with his head twisted on one side as if he had been

hanged. Sir Edward Carson might make a perfectly good speech, which no

one thought wearisome, but might himself be just tired enough to shift

from one leg to the other. Snapshot him, and he appears as holding one

leg stiffly in the air and yawning enough to swallow the audience.

But it is in the prose narratives of the Press that we find most

manifestations of this strange ineptitude; this knack of exhibiting your

own favourites in an unlucky light. It is not so much that the party

journalists do not tell the truth as that they tell just enough of it

to make it clear that they are telling lies. One of their favourite

blunders is an amazing sort of bathos. They begin by telling you that

some statesman said something brilliant in style or biting in wit, at

which his hearers thrilled with terror or thundered with applause. And

then they tell you what it was that he said. Silly asses!

Insane Exaggeration

Here is an example from a leading Liberal paper touching the debates on

Home Rule. I am a Home Ruler; so my sympathies would be, if anything, on

the side of the Liberal paper upon that point. I merely quote it as

an example of this ridiculous way of writing, which, by insane

exaggeration, actually makes its hero look smaller than he is.

This was strange language to use about the “hypocritical sham,” and Mr.

Asquith, knowing that the biggest battle of his career was upon him,

hit back without mercy. “I should like first to know,” said he, with a

glance at his supporters, “whether my proposals are accepted?”

That’s all. And I really do not see why poor Mr. Asquith should be

represented as having violated the Christian virtue of mercy by saying

that. I myself could compose a great many paragraphs upon the same

model, each containing its stinging and perhaps unscrupulous epigram.

As, for example:—“The Archbishop of Canterbury, realising that his

choice now lay between denying God and earning the crown of martyrdom by

dying in torments, spoke with a frenzy of religious passion that might

have seemed fanatical under circumstances less intense. ‘The Children’s

Service,’ he said firmly, with his face to the congregation, ‘will be

held at half-past four this afternoon as usual.’”

Or, we might have:—“Lord Roberts, recognising that he had now to face

Armageddon, and that if he lost this last battle against overwhelming

odds the independence of England would be extinguished forever,

addressed to his soldiers (looking at them and not falling off his

horse) a speech which brought their national passions to boiling point,

and might well have seemed blood-thirsty in quieter times. It ended with

the celebrated declaration that it was a fine day.”

Or we might have the much greater excitement of reading something like

this:—“The Astronomer Royal, having realised that the earth would

certainly be smashed to pieces by a comet unless his requests in

connection with wireless telegraphy were seriously considered, gave an

address at the Royal Society which, under other circumstances, would

have seemed unduly dogmatic and emotional and deficient in scientific

agnosticism. This address (which he delivered without any attempt to

stand on his head) included a fierce and even ferocious declaration that

it is generally easier to see the stars by night than by day.”

Now, I cannot see, on my conscience and reason, that any one of my

imaginary paragraphs is more ridiculous than the real one. Nobody can

believe that Mr. Asquith regards these belated and careful compromises

about Home Rule as “the biggest battle of his career.” It is only

justice to him to say that he has had bigger battles than that. Nobody

can believe that any body of men, bodily present, either thundered or

thrilled at a man merely saying that he would like to know whether his

proposals were accepted. No; it would be far better for Parliament if

its doors were shut again, and reporters were excluded. In that case,

the outer public did hear genuine rumours of almost gigantic eloquence;

such as that which has perpetuated Pitt’s reply against the charge of

youth, or Fox’s bludgeoning of the idea of war as a compromise. It would

be much better to follow the old fashion and let in no reporters at all

than to follow the new fashion and select the stupidest reporters you

can find.

Their Load of Lies

Now, why do people in Fleet-street talk such tosh? People in

Fleet-street are not fools. Most of them have realised reality through

work; some through starvation; some through damnation, or something

damnably like it. I think it is simply and seriously true that they

are tired of their job. As the general said in M. Rostand’s play, “la

fatigue!”

I do really believe that this is one of the ways in which God (don’t get

flurried, Nature if you like) is unexpectedly avenged on things infamous

and unreasonable. And this method is that men’s moral and even physical

tenacity actually give out under such a load of lies. They go on writing

their leading articles and their Parliamentary reports. They go on doing

it as a convict goes on picking oakum. But the point is not that we are

bored with their articles; the point is that they are. The work is done

worse because it is done weakly and without human enthusiasm. And it

is done weakly because of the truth we have told so many times in this

book: that it is not done for monarchy, for which men will die; or for

democracy, for which men will die; or even for aristocracy, for which

many men have died. It is done for a thing called Capitalism: which

stands out quite clearly in history in many curious ways. But the most

curious thing about it is that no man has loved it; and no man died for

it.

THE AMNESTY FOR AGGRESSION

If there is to rise out of all this red ruin something like a republic

of justice, it is essential that our views should be real views; that

is, glimpses of lives and landscapes outside ourselves. It is essential

that they should not be mere opium visions that begin and end in

smoke—and so often in cannon smoke. I make no apology, therefore, for

returning to the purely practical and realistic point I urged last week:

the fact that we shall lose everything we might have gained if we lose

the idea that the responsible person is responsible.

For instance, it is almost specially so with the one or two things in

which the British Government, or the British public, really are behaving

badly. The first, and worst of them, is the non-extension of the

Moratorium, or truce of debtor and creditor, to the very world where

there are the poorest debtors and the cruellest creditors. This is

infamous: and should be, if possible, more infamous to those who think

the war right than to those who think it wrong. Everyone knows that

the people who can least pay their debts are the people who are always

trying to. Among the poor a payment may be as rash as a speculation.

Among the rich a bankruptcy may be as safe as a bank. Considering the

class from which private soldiers are taken, there is an atrocious

meanness in the idea of buying their blood abroad, while we sell their

sticks at home. The English language, by the way, is full of delicate

paradoxes. We talk of the private soldiers because they are really

public soldiers; and we talk of the public schools because they are

really private schools. Anyhow, the wrong is of the sort that ought to

be resisted, as much in war as in peace.

Ought to Be Hammered

But as long as we speak of it as a cloudy conclusion, come to by an

anonymous club called Parliament, or a masked tribunal called the

Cabinet, we shall never get such a wrong righted. Somebody is officially

responsible for the unfairness; and that somebody ought to be hammered.

The other example, less important but more ludicrous, is the silly

boycott of Germans in England, extending even to German music. I do

not believe for a moment that the English people feel any such insane

fastidiousness. Are the English artists who practise the particularly

English art of water-colour to be forbidden to use Prussian blue? Are

all old ladies to shoot their Pomeranian dogs? But though England would

laugh at this, she will get the credit of it, and will continue: until

we ask who the actual persons are who feel sure that we should shudder

at a ballad of the Rhine. It is certain that we should find they

are capitalists. It is very probable that we should find they are

foreigners.

Some days ago the Official Council of the Independent Labour Party, or

the Independent Council of the Official Labour Party, or the Independent

and Official Council of the Labour Party (I have got quite nervous about

these names and distinctions; but they all seem to say the same thing)

began their manifesto by saying it would be difficult to assign the

degrees of responsibility which each nation had for the outbreak of the

war. Afterwards, a writer in the “Christian Commonwealth,” lamenting

war in the name of Labour, but in the language of my own romantic

middle-class, said that all the nations must share the responsibility

for this great calamity of war. Now exactly as long as we go on talking

like that we shall have war after war, and calamity after calamity,

until the crack of doom. It simply amounts to a promise of pardon to

any person who will start a quarrel. It is an amnesty for assassins. The

moment any man assaults any other man he makes all the other men as

bad as himself. He has only to stab, and to vanish in a fog of

forgetfulness. The real eagles of iron, the predatory Empires, will be

delighted with this doctrine. They will applaud the Labour Concert or

Committee, or whatever it is called. They will willingly take all the

crime, with only a quarter of the conscience: they will be as ready to

share the memory as they are to share the spoil. The Powers will divide

responsibility as calmly as they divided Poland.

The Whole Loathsome Load

But I still stubbornly and meekly submit my point: that you cannot

end war without asking who began it. If you think somebody else, not

Germany, began it, then blame that somebody else: do not blame everybody

and nobody. Perhaps you think that a small sovereign people, fresh from

two triumphant wars, ought to discrown itself before sunrise; because

the nephew of a neighbouring Emperor has been shot by his own subjects.

Very well. Then blame Servia; and, to the extent of your influence, you

may be preventing small kingdoms being obstinate or even princes being

shot. Perhaps you think the whole thing was a huge conspiracy of Russia,

with France as a dupe and Servia as a pretext. Very well. Then blame

Russia; and, to the extent of your influence, you may be preventing

great Empires from making racial excuses for a raid. Perhaps you think

France wrong for feeling what you call “revenge,” and I should

call recovery of stolen goods. Perhaps you blame Belgium for being

sentimental about her frontier; or England for being sentimental about

her word. If so, blame them; or whichever of them you think is to blame.

Or again, it is barely possible that you may think, as I do, that the

whole loathsome load has been laid upon us by the monarchy which I have

not named; still less wasted time in abusing. But if there be in Europe

a military State which has not the religion of Russia, yet has helped

Russia to tyrannise over the Poles, that State cares not for religion,

but for tyranny. If there be a State in Europe which has not the

religion of the Austrians, but has helped Austria to bully the Servians,

that State cares not for belief, but for bullying. If there be in

Europe any people or principality which respects neither republics nor

religions, to which the political ideal of Paris is as much a myth as

the mystical ideal of Moscow, then blame that: and do more than blame.

In the healthy and highly theological words of Robert Blatchford, drive

it back to the Hell from which it came.

Crying Over Spilt Blood

But whatever you do, do not blame everybody for what was certainly done

by somebody. It may be it is no good crying over spilt blood, any

more than over spilt milk. But we do not find the culprit any more by

spilling the milk over everybody; or by daubing everybody with blood.

Still less do we improve matters by watering the milk with our tears,

nor the blood either. To say that everybody is responsible means that

nobody is responsible. If in the future we see Russia annexing Rutland

(as part of the old Kingdom of Muscovy), if we see Bavaria taking a

sudden fancy to the Bank of England, or the King of the Cannibal Islands

suddenly demanding a tribute of edible boys and girls from England and

America, we may be quite certain also that the Leader of the Labour

Party will rise, with a slight cough, and say: “It would be a difficult

task to apportion the blame between the various claims which…”

REVIVE THE COURT JESTER

I hope the Government will not think just now about appointing a Poet

Laureate. I hardly think they can be altogether in the right mood. The

business just now before the country makes a very good detective story;

but as a national epic it is a little depressing. Jingo literature

always weakens a nation; but even healthy patriotic literature has

its proper time and occasion. For instance, Mr. Newbolt (who has been

suggested for the post) is a very fine poet; but I think his patriotic

lyrics would just now rather jar upon a patriot. We are rather too much

concerned about our practical seamanship to feel quite confident that

Drake will return and “drum them up the Channel as he drummed them long

ago.” On the contrary, we have an uncomfortable feeling that Drake’s

ship might suddenly go to the bottom, because the capitalists have made

Lloyd George abolish the Plimsoll Line. One could not, without being

understood ironically, adjure the two party teams to-day to “play up,

play up and play the game,” or to “love the game more than the

prize.” And there is no national hero at this moment in the soldiering

line—unless, perhaps, it is Major Archer-Shee—of whom anyone would

be likely to say: “Sed miles; sed pro patria.” There is, indeed, one

beautiful poem of Mr. Newbolt’s which may mingle faintly with one’s

thoughts in such times, but that, alas, is to a very different tune. I

mean that one in which he echoes Turner’s conception of the old wooden

ship vanishing with all the valiant memories of the English:

There’s a far bell ringing

At the setting of the sun,

And a phantom voice is singing

Of the great days done.

There’s a far bell ringing,

And a phantom voice is singing

Of a fame forever clinging

To the great days done.

For the sunset breezes shiver,

Temeraire, Temeraire,

And she’s fading down the river…

Well, well, neither you nor I know whether she is fading down the river

or not. It is quite enough for us to know, as King Alfred did, that a

great many pirates have landed on both banks of the Thames.

Praise and Prophecy Impossible

At this moment that is the only kind of patriotic poem that could

satisfy the emotions of a patriotic person. But it certainly is not

the sort of poem that is expected from a Poet Laureate, either on

the highest or the lowest theory of his office. He is either a great

minstrel singing the victories of a great king, or he is a common Court

official like the Groom of the Powder Closet. In the first case his

praises should be true; in the second case they will nearly always be

false; but in either case he must praise. And what there is for him to

praise just now it would be precious hard to say. And if there is no

great hope of a real poet, there is still less hope of a real prophet.

What Newman called, I think, “The Prophetical Office,” that is, the

institution of an inspired protest even against an inspired religion,

certainly would not do in modern England. The Court is not likely to

keep a tame prophet in order to encourage him to be wild. It is not

likely to pay a man to say that wolves shall howl in Downing-street and

vultures build their nests in Buckingham Palace. So vast has been the

progress of humanity that these two things are quite impossible. We

cannot have a great poet praising kings. We cannot have a great prophet

denouncing kings. So I have to fall back on a third suggestion.

The Field for a Fool

Instead of reviving the Court Poet, why not revive the Court Fool? He is

the only person who could do any good at this moment either to the

Royal or the judicial Courts. The present political situation is utterly

unsuitable for the purposes of a great poet. But it is particularly

suitable for the purposes of a great buffoon. The old jester was under

certain privileges: you could not resent the jokes of a fool, just

as you cannot resent the sermons of a curate. Now, what the present

Government of England wants is neither serious praise nor serious

denunciation; what it wants is satire. What it wants, in other words,

is realism given with gusto. When King Louis the Eleventh unexpectedly

visited his enemy, the Duke of Burgundy, with a small escort, the Duke’s

jester said he would give the King his fool’s cap, for he was the fool

now. And when the Duke replied with dignity, “And suppose I treat him

with all proper respect?” the fool answered, “Then I will give it to

you.” That is the kind of thing that somebody ought to be free to say

now. But if you say it now you will be fined a hundred pounds at the

least.

Carson’s Dilemma

For the things that have been happening lately are not merely things

that one could joke about. They are themselves, truly and intrinsically,

jokes. I mean that there is a sort of epigram of unreason in the

situation itself, as there was in the situation where there was jam

yesterday and jam to-morrow but never jam to-day. Take, for instance,

the extraordinary case of Sir Edward Carson. The point is not whether we

regard his attitude in Belfast as the defiance of a sincere and dogmatic

rebel, or as the bluff of a party hack and mountebank. The point is not

whether we regard his defence of the Government at the Old Bailey as a

chivalrous and reluctant duty done as an advocate or a friend, or as

a mere case of a lawyer selling his soul for a fat brief. The point is

that whichever of the two actions we approve, and whichever of the four

explanations we adopt, Sir Edward’s position is still raving nonsense.

On any argument, he cannot escape from his dilemma. It may be argued

that laws and customs should be obeyed whatever our private feelings;

and that it is an established custom to accept a brief in such a case.

But then it is a somewhat more established custom to obey an Act

of Parliament and to keep the peace. It may be argued that extreme

misgovernment justifies men in Ulster or elsewhere in refusing to obey

the law. But then it would justify them even more in refusing to

appear professionally in a law court. Etiquette cannot be at once so

unimportant that Carson may shoot at the King’s uniform, and yet so

important that he must always be ready to put on his own. The Government

cannot be so disreputable that Carson need not lay down his gun, and yet

so respectable that he is bound to put on his wig. Carson cannot at once

be so fierce that he can kill in what he considers a good cause, and yet

so meek that he must argue in what he considers a bad cause. Obedience

or disobedience, conventional or unconventional, a solicitor’s letter

cannot be more sacred than the King’s writ; a blue bag cannot be more

rational than the British flag. The thing is rubbish read anyway, and

the only difficulty is to get a joke good enough to express it. It is a

case for the Court Jester. The phantasy of it could only be expressed by

some huge ceremonial hoax. Carson ought to be crowned with the shamrocks

and emeralds and followed by green-clad minstrels of the Clan-na-Gael,

playing “The Wearing of the Green.”

Belated Chattiness by Wireless

But all the recent events are like that. They are practical jokes. The

jokes do not need to be made: they only need to be pointed out. You and

I do not talk and act as the Isaacs brothers talked and acted, by their

own most favourable account of themselves; and even their account of

themselves was by no means favourable. You and I do not talk of

meeting our own born brother “at a family function” as if he were some

infinitely distant cousin whom we only met at Christmas. You and I, when

we suddenly feel inclined for a chat with the same brother about his

dinner and the Coal Strike, do not generally select either wireless

telegraphy or the Atlantic Cable as the most obvious and economical

channel for that outburst of belated chattiness. You and I do not talk,

if it is proposed to start a railway between Catsville and Dogtown, as

if the putting up of a station at Dogtown could have no kind of economic

effect on the putting up of a station at Catsville. You and I do not

think it candid to say that when we are at one end of a telephone we

have no sort of connection with the other end. These things have got

into the region of farce; and should be dealt with farcically, not even

ferociously.

A Fool Who Shall Be Free

In the Roman Republic there was a Tribune of the People, whose person

was inviolable like an ambassador’s. There was much the same idea

in Becket’s attempt to remove the Priest, who was then the popular

champion, from the ordinary courts. We shall have no Tribune; for we

have no republic. We shall have no Priest; for we have no religion. The

best we deserve or can expect is a Fool who shall be free; and who shall

deliver us with laughter.

THE ART OF MISSING THE POINT

Missing the point is a very fine art; and has been carried to something

like perfection by politicians and Pressmen to-day. For the point is

generally a very sharp point; and is, moreover, sharp at both ends.

That is to say that both parties would probably impale themselves in an

uncomfortable manner if they did not manage to avoid it altogether. I

have just been looking at the election address of the official Liberal

candidate for the part of the country in which I live; and though it

is, if anything, rather more logical and free from cant than most other

documents of the sort it is an excellent example of missing the point.

The candidate has to go boring on about Free Trade and Land Reform and

Education; and nobody reading it could possibly imagine that in the town

of Wycombe, where the poll will be declared, the capital of the Wycombe

division of Bucks which the candidate is contesting, centre of the

important and vital trade on which it has thriven, a savage struggle

about justice has been raging for months past between the poor and rich,

as real as the French Revolution. The man offering himself at Wycombe as

representative of the Wycombe division simply says nothing about it at

all. It is as if a man at the crisis of the French Terror had offered

himself as a deputy for the town of Paris, and had said nothing about

the Monarchy, nothing about the Republic, nothing about the massacres,

nothing about the war; but had explained with great clearness his views

on the suppression of the Jansenists, the literary style of Racine,

the suitability of Turenae for the post of commander-in-chief, and the

religious reflections of Madame de Maintenon. For, at their best, the

candidate’s topics are not topical. Home Rule is a very good thing, and

modern education is a very bad thing; but neither of them are things

that anybody is talking about in High Wycombe. This is the first and

simplest way of missing the point: deliberately to avoid and ignore it.

The Candid Candidate

It would be an amusing experiment, by the way, to go to the point

instead of avoiding it. What fun it would be to stand as a strict Party

candidate, but issue a perfectly frank and cynical Election Address.

Mr. Mosley’s address begins, “Gentlemen,—Sir Alfred Cripps having been

chosen for a high judicial position and a seat in the House of Lords, a

by-election now becomes necessary, and the electors of South Bucks are

charged with the responsible duty of electing, etc., etc.” But suppose

there were another candidate whose election address opened in a plain,

manly style, like this: “Gentlemen,—In the sincere hope of being myself

chosen for a high judicial position or a seat in the House of Lords,

or considerably increasing my private fortune by some Government

appointment, or, at least, inside information about the financial

prospects, I have decided that it is worth my while to disburse large

sums of money to you on various pretexts, and, with even more reluctance

to endure the bad speaking and bad ventilation of the Commons’ House

of Parliament, so help me God. I have very pronounced convictions on

various political questions; but I will not trouble my fellow-citizens

with them, since I have quite made up my mind to abandon any or all

of them if requested to do so by the upper classes. The electors are

therefore charged with the entirely irresponsible duty of electing a

Member; or, in other words, I ask my neighbours round about this part,

who know I am not a bad chap in many ways, to do me a good turn in my

business, just as I might ask them to change a sovereign. My election

will have no conceivable kind of effect on anything or anybody except

myself; so I ask, as man to man, the Electors of the Southern or Wycombe

Division of the County of Buckingham to accept a ride in one of my

motor-cars; and poll early to please a pal—God Save the King.” I do not

know whether you or I would be elected if we presented ourselves with

an election address of that kind; but we should have had our fun and

(comparatively speaking) saved our souls; and I have a strong suspicion

that we should be elected or rejected on a mechanical majority like

anybody else; nobody having dreamed of reading an election address any

more than an advertisement of a hair restorer.

Tyranny and Head-Dress

But there is another and more subtle way in which we may miss the point;

and that is, not by keeping a dead silence about it, but by being just

witty enough to state it wrong. Thus, some of the Liberal official

papers have almost screwed up their courage to the sticking-point about

the bestial coup d’etat in South Africa. They have screwed up their

courage to the sticking-point; and it has stuck. It cannot get any

further; because it has missed the main point. The modern Liberals make

their feeble attempts to attack the introduction of slavery into South

Africa by the Dutch and the Jews, by a very typical evasion of the vital

fact. The vital fact is simply slavery. Most of these Dutchmen have

always felt like slave-owners. Most of these Jews have always felt like

slaves. Now that they are on top, they have a particular and curious

kind of impudence, which is only known among slaves. But the Liberal

journalists will do their best to suggest that the South African

wrong consisted in what they call Martial Law. That is, that there is

something specially wicked about men doing an act of cruelty in khaki

or in vermilion, but not if it is done in dark blue with pewter buttons.

The tyrant who wears a busby or a forage cap is abominable; the tyrant

who wears a horsehair wig is excusable. To be judged by soldiers is

hell; but to be judged by lawyers is paradise.

Now the point must not be missed in this way. What is wrong with the

tyranny in Africa is not that it is run by soldiers. It would be quite

as bad, or worse, if it were run by policemen. What is wrong is that,

for the first time since Pagan times, private men are being forced to

work for a private man. Men are being punished by imprisonment or exile

for refusing to accept a job. The fact that Botha can ride on a horse,

or fire off a gun, makes him better rather than worse than any man like

Sidney Webb or Philip Snowden, who attempt the same slavery by much less

manly methods. The Liberal Party will try to divert the whole discussion

to one about what they call militarism. But the very terms of modern

politics contradict it. For when we talk of real rebels against the

present system we call them Militants. And there will be none in the

Servile State.

THE SERVILE STATE AGAIN

I read the other day, in a quotation from a German newspaper, the highly

characteristic remark that Germany having annexed Belgium would soon

re-establish its commerce and prosperity, and that, in particular,

arrangements were already being made for introducing into the new

province the German laws for the protection of workmen.

I am quite content with that paragraph for the purpose of any

controversy about what is called German atrocity. If men I know had not

told me they had themselves seen the bayoneting of a baby; if the

most respectable refugees did not bring with them stories of burning

cottages—yes, and of burning cottagers as well; if doctors did not

report what they do report of the condition of girls in the hospitals;

if there were no facts; if there were no photographs, that one phrase I

have quoted would be quite sufficient to satisfy me that the Prussians

are tyrants; tyrants in a peculiar and almost insane sense which makes

them pre-eminent among the evil princes of the earth. The first and

most striking feature is a stupidity that rises into a sort of ghastly

innocence. The protection of workmen! Some workmen, perhaps, might have

a fancy for being protected from shrapnel; some might be glad to put up

an umbrella that would ward off things dropping from the gentle

Zeppelin in heaven upon the place beneath. Some of these discontented

proletarians have taken the same view as Vandervelde their leader, and

are now energetically engaged in protecting themselves along the line

of the Yser; I am glad to say not altogether without success. It is

probable that nearly all of the Belgian workers would, on the

whole, prefer to be protected against bombs, sabres, burning cities,

starvation, torture, and the treason of wicked kings. In short, it is

probable—it is at least possible, impious as is the idea—that they

would prefer to be protected against Germans and all they represent.

But if a Belgian workman is told that he is not to be protected against

Germans, but actually to be protected by Germans, I think he may be

excused for staring. His first impulse, I imagine, will be to ask,

“Against whom? Are there any worse people to come along?”

But apart from the hellish irony of this humanitarian idea, the question

it raises is really one of solid importance for people whose politics

are more or less like ours. There is a very urgent point in that

question, “Against whom would the Belgian workmen be protected by

the German laws?” And if we pursue it, we shall be enabled to analyse

something of that poison—very largely a Prussian poison—which has long

been working in our own commonwealth, to the enslavement of the weak

and the secret strengthening of the strong. For the Prussian armies

are, pre-eminently, the advance guard of the Servile State. I say this

scientifically, and quite apart from passion or even from preference.

I have no illusions about either Belgium or England. Both have been

stained with the soot of Capitalism and blinded with the smoke of mere

Colonial ambition; both have been caught at a disadvantage in such

modern dirt and disorder; both have come out much better than I should

have expected countries so modern and so industrial to do. But in

England and Belgium there is Capitalism mixed up with a great many other

things, strong things and things that pursue other aims; Clericalism,

for instance, and militant Socialism in Belgium; Trades Unionism and

sport and the remains of real aristocracy in England. But Prussia is

Capitalism; that is, a gradually solidifying slavery; and that majestic

unity with which she moves, dragging all the dumb Germanies after her,

is due to the fact that her Servile State is complete, while ours is

incomplete. There are not mutinies; there are not even mockeries; the

voice of national self-criticism has been extinguished forever. For this

people is already permanently cloven into a higher and a lower class:

in its industry as much as its army. Its employers are, in the strictest

and most sinister sense, captains of industry. Its proletariat is,

in the truest and most pitiable sense, an army of labour. In that

atmosphere masters bear upon them the signs that they are more than men;

and to insult an officer is death.

If anyone ask how this extreme and unmistakable subordination of the

employed to the employers is brought about, we all know the answer.

It is brought about by hunger and hardness of heart, accelerated by a

certain kind of legislation, of which we have had a good deal lately

in England, but which was almost invariably borrowed from Prussia. Mr.

Herbert Samuel’s suggestion that the poor should be able to put their

money in little boxes and not be able to get it out again is a sort

of standing symbol of all the rest. I have forgotten how the poor were

going to benefit eventually by what is for them indistinguishable from

dropping sixpence down a drain. Perhaps they were going to get it back

some day; perhaps when they could produce a hundred coupons out of the

Daily Citizen; perhaps when they got their hair cut; perhaps when they

consented to be inoculated, or trepanned, or circumcised, or something.

Germany is full of this sort of legislation; and if you asked an

innocent German, who honestly believed in it, what it was, he would

answer that it was for the protection of workmen.

And if you asked again “Their protection from what?” you would have

the whole plan and problem of the Servile State plain in front of you.

Whatever notion there is, there is no notion whatever of protecting the

employed person from his employer. Much less is there any idea of his

ever being anywhere except under an employer. Whatever the Capitalist

wants he gets. He may have the sense to want washed and well-fed

labourers rather than dirty and feeble ones, and the restrictions may

happen to exist in the form of laws from the Kaiser or by-laws from the

Krupps. But the Kaiser will not offend the Krupps, and the Krupps

will not offend the Kaiser. Laws of this kind, then, do not attempt to

protect workmen against the injustice of the Capitalist as the English

Trade Unions did. They do not attempt to protect workmen against the

injustice of the State as the mediaeval guilds did. Obviously they

cannot protect workmen against the foreign invader—especially when (as

in the comic case of Belgium) they are imposed by the foreign invader.

What then are such laws designed to protect workmen against? Tigers,

rattlesnakes, hyenas?

Oh, my young friends; oh, my Christian brethren, they are designed to

protect this poor person from something which to those of established

rank is more horrid than many hyenas. They are designed, my friends, to

protect a man from himself—from something that the masters of the earth

fear more than famine or war, and which Prussia especially fears as

everything fears that which would certainly be its end. They are meant

to protect a man against himself—that is, they are meant to protect a

man against his manhood.

And if anyone reminds me that there is a Socialist Party in Germany, I

reply that there isn’t.

THE EMPIRE OF THE IGNORANT

That anarchic future which the more timid Tories professed to fear has

already fallen upon us. We are ruled by ignorant people. But the most

ignorant people in modern Britain are to be found in the upper class,

the middle class, and especially the upper middle class. I do not say

it with the smallest petulance or even distaste; these classes are

often really beneficent in their breeding or their hospitality, or their

humanity to animals.

There is still no better company than the young at the two Universities,

or the best of the old in the Army or some of the other services. Also,

of course, there are exceptions in the matter of learning; real scholars

like Professor Gilbert Murray or Professor Phillimore are not ignorant,

though they are gentlemen. But when one looks up at any mass of the

wealthier and more powerful classes, at the Grand Stand at Epsom, at

the windows of Park-lane, at the people at a full-dress debate or a

fashionable wedding, we shall be safe in saying that they are, for the

most part, the most ill-taught, or untaught, creatures in these islands.

Literally Illiterate

It is indeed their feeble boast that they are not literally illiterate.

They are always saying the ancient barons could not sign their own

names—for they know less of history perhaps than of anything else. The

modern barons, however, can sign their own names—or someone else’s for

a change. They can sign their own names; and that is about all they can

do. They cannot face a fact, or follow an argument, or feel a tradition;

but, least of all, can they, upon any persuasion, read through a plain

impartial book, English or foreign, that is not specially written to

soothe their panic or to please their pride. Looking up at these seats

of the mighty I can only say, with something of despair, what Robert

Lowe said of the enfranchised workmen: “We must educate our masters.”

I do not mean this as paradoxical, or even as symbolical; it is simply

tame and true. The modern English rich know nothing about things, not

even about the things to which they appeal. Compared with them, the

poor are pretty sure to get some enlightenment, even if they cannot get

liberty; they must at least be technical. An old apprentice learnt

a trade, even if his master came like any Turk and banged him most

severely. The old housewife knew which side her bread was buttered, even

if it were so thin as to be almost imperceptible. The old sailor knew

the ropes; even if he knew the rope’s end. Consequently, when any

of these revolted, they were concerned with things they knew, pains,

practical impossibilities, or the personal record.

But They Know

The apprentice cried “Clubs?” and cracked his neighbours’ heads with

the precision and fineness of touch which only manual craftsmanship can

give. The housewives who flatly refused to cook the hot dinner knew how

much or how little, cold meat there was in the house. The sailor who

defied discipline by mutinying at the Nore did not defy discipline in

the sense of falling off the rigging or letting the water into the hold.

Similarly the modern proletariat, however little it may know, knows what

it is talking about.

But the curious thing about the educated class is that exactly what it

does not know is what it is talking about. I mean that it is startlingly

ignorant of those special things which it is supposed to invoke and keep

inviolate. The things that workmen invoke may be uglier, more acrid,

more sordid; but they know all about them. They know enough arithmetic

to know that prices have risen; the kind Levantine gentleman is always

there to make them fully understand the meaning of an interest sum; and

the landlord will define Rent as rigidly as Ricardo. The doctors can

always tell them the Latin for an empty stomach; and when the poor man

is treated for the time with some human respect (by the Coroner) it

almost seems a pity he is not alive to hear how legally he died.

Against this bitter shrewdness and bleak realism in the suffering

classes it is commonly supposed that the more leisured classes stand for

certain legitimate ideas which also have their place in life; such as

history, reverence, the love of the land. Well, it might be no bad thing

to have something, even if it were something narrow, that testified to

the truths of religion or patriotism. But such narrow things in the

past have always at least known their own history; the bigot knew his

catechism; the patriot knew his way home. The astonishing thing about

the modern rich is their real and sincere ignorance—especially of the

things they like.

No!

Take the most topical case you can find in any drawing-room: Belfast.

Ulster is most assuredly a matter of history; and there is a sense in

which Orange resistance is a matter of religion. But go and ask any of

the five hundred fluttering ladies at a garden party (who find Carson so

splendid and Belfast so thrilling) what it is all about, when it began,

where it came from, what it really maintains? What was the history

of Ulster? What is the religion of Belfast? Do any of them know where

Ulstermen were in Grattan’s time; do any of them know what was the

“Protestantism” that came from Scotland to that isle; could any of them

tell what part of the old Catholic system it really denied?

It was generally something that the fluttering ladies find in their own

Anglican churches every Sunday. It were vain to ask them to state the

doctrines of the Calvinist creed; they could not state the doctrines

of their own creed. It were vain to tell them to read the history of

Ireland; they have never read the history of England. It would matter as

little that they do not know these things, as that I do not know German;

but then German is not the only thing I am supposed to know. History and

ritual are the only things aristocrats are supposed to know; and they

don’t know them.

Smile and Smile

I am not fed on turtle soup and Tokay because of my exquisite intimacy

with the style and idiom of Heine and Richter. The English governing

class is fed on turtle soup and Tokay to represent the past, of which

it is literally ignorant, as I am of German irregular verbs; and to

represent the religious traditions of the State, when it does not know

three words of theology, as I do not know three words of German.

This is the last insult offered by the proud to the humble. They rule

them by the smiling terror of an ancient secret. They smile and smile;

but they have forgotten the secret.

THE SYMBOLISM OF KRUPP

The curious position of the Krupp firm in the awful story developing

around us is not quite sufficiently grasped. There is a kind of academic

clarity of definition which does not see the proportions of things for

which everything falls within a definition, and nothing ever breaks

beyond it. To this type of mind (which is valuable when set to its

special and narrow work) there is no such thing as an exception that

proves the rule. If I vote for confiscating some usurer’s millions I am

doing, they say, precisely what I should be doing if I took pennies out

of a blind man’s hat. They are both denials of the principle of private

property, and are equally right and equally wrong, according to our view

of that principle. I should find a great many distinctions to draw

in such a matter. First, I should say that taking a usurer’s money by

proper authority is not robbery, but recovery of stolen goods. Second,

I should say that even if there were no such thing as personal property,

there would still be such a thing as personal dignity, and different

modes of robbery would diminish it in very different ways. Similarly,

there is a truth, but only a half-truth, in the saying that all modern

Powers alike rely on the Capitalist and make war on the lines of

Capitalism. It is true, and it is disgraceful. But it is not equally

true and equally disgraceful. It is not true that Montenegro is as much

ruled by financiers as Prussia, just as it is not true that as many men

in the Kaiserstrasse, in Berlin, wear long knives in their belts as wear

them in the neighbourhood of the Black Mountain. It is not true that

every peasant from one of the old Russian communes is the immediate

servant of a rich man, as is every employee of Mr. Rockefeller. It is as

false as the statement that no poor people in America can read or write.

There is an element of Capitalism in all modern countries, as there is

an element of illiteracy in all modern countries. There are some who

think that the number of our fellow-citizens who can sign their names

ought to comfort us for the extreme fewness of those who have anything

in the bank to sign it for, but I am not one of these.

In any case, the position of Krupp has certain interesting aspects. When

we talk of Army contractors as among the base but active actualities of

war, we commonly mean that while the contractor benefits by the war,

the war, on the whole, rather suffers by the contractor. We regard this

unsoldierly middleman with disgust, or great anger, or contemptuous

acquiescence, or commercial dread and silence, according to our personal

position and character. But we nowhere think of him as having anything

to do with fighting in the final sense. Those worthy and wealthy persons

who employ women’s labour at a few shillings a week do not do it to

obtain the best clothes for the soldiers, but to make a sufficient

profit on the worst. The only argument is whether such clothes are just

good enough for the soldiers, or are too bad for anybody or anything. We

tolerate the contractor, or we do not tolerate him; but no one admires

him especially, and certainly no one gives him any credit for any

success in the war. Confessedly or unconfessedly we knock his profits,

not only off what goes to the taxpayer, but what goes to the soldier. We

know the Army will not fight any better, at least, because the clothes

they wear were stitched by wretched women who could hardly see; or

because their boots were made by harassed helots, who never had time to

think. In war-time it is very widely confessed that Capitalism is not a

good way of ruling a patriotic or self-respecting people, and all sorts

of other things, from strict State organisation to quite casual personal

charity, are hastily substituted for it. It is recognised that the

“great employer,” nine times out of ten, is no more than the schoolboy

or the page who pilfers tarts and sweets from the dishes as they go up

and down. How angry one is with him depends on temperament, on the stage

of the dinner—also on the number of tarts.

Now here comes in the real and sinister significance of Krupps. There

are many capitalists in Europe as rich, as vulgar, as selfish, as

rootedly opposed to any fellowship of the fortunate and unfortunate. But

there is no other capitalist who claims, or can pretend to claim, that

he has very appreciably helped the activities of his people in war. I

will suppose that Lipton did not deserve the very severe criticisms

made on his firm by Mr. Justice Darling; but, however blameless he was,

nobody can suppose that British soldiers would charge better with the

bayonet because they had some particular kind of groceries inside them.

But Krupp can make a plausible claim that the huge infernal machines to

which his country owes nearly all of its successes could only have been

produced under the equally infernal conditions of the modern factory

and the urban and proletarian civilisation. That is why the victory of

Germany would be simply the victory of Krupp, and the victory of Krupp

would be simply the victory of Capitalism. There, and there alone,

Capitalism would be able to point to something done successfully for a

whole nation—done (as it would certainly maintain) better than small

free States or natural democracies could have done it. I confess I think

the modern Germans morally second-rate, and I think that even war, when

it is conducted most successfully by machinery, is second-rate war. But

this second-rate war will become not only the first but the only brand,

if the cannon of Krupp should conquer; and, what is very much worse, it

will be the only intelligent answer that any capitalist has yet given

against our case that Capitalism is as wasteful and as weak as it is

certainly wicked. I do not fear any such finality, for I happen to

believe in the kind of men who fight best with bayonets and whose

fathers hammered their own pikes for the French Revolution.

THE TOWER OF BEBEL

Among the cloudy and symbolic stories in the beginning of the Bible

there is one about a tower built with such vertical energy as to take a

hold on heaven, but ruined and resulting only in a confusion of tongues.

The story might be interpreted in many ways—religiously, as meaning

that spiritual insolence starts all human separations; irreligiously,

as meaning that the inhuman heavens grudge man his magnificent dream;

or merely satirically as suggesting that all attempts to reach a higher

agreement always end in more disagreement than there was before. It

might be taken by the partially intelligent Kensitite as a judgment on

Latin Christians for talking Latin. It might be taken by the somewhat

less intelligent Professor Harnack as a final proof that all prehistoric

humanity talked German. But when all was said, the symbol would remain

that a plain tower, as straight as a sword, as simple as a lily, did

nevertheless produce the deepest divisions that have been known among

men. In any case we of the world in revolt—Syndicalists, Socialists,

Guild Socialists, or whatever we call ourselves—have no need to worry

about the scripture or the allegory. We have the reality. For whatever

reason, what is said to have happened to the people of Shinak has

precisely and practically happened to us.

None of us who have known Socialists (or rather, to speak more

truthfully, none of us who have been Socialists) can entertain the

faintest doubt that a fine intellectual sincerity lay behind what

was called “L’Internationale.” It was really felt that Socialism was

universal like arithmetic. It was too true for idiom or turn of phrase.

In the formula of Karl Marx men could find that frigid fellowship which

they find when they agree that two and two make four. It was almost as

broadminded as a religious dogma.

Yet this universal language has not succeeded, at a moment of crisis,

in imposing itself on the whole world. Nay, it has not, at the moment

of crisis, succeeded in imposing itself on its own principal champions.

Herve is not talking Economic Esperanto; he is talking French. Bebel is

not talking Economic Esperanto; he is talking German. Blatchford is

not talking Economic Esperanto; he is talking English, and jolly good

English, too. I do not know whether French or Flemish was Vandervelde’s

nursery speech, but I am quite certain he will know more of it after

this struggle than he knew before. In short, whether or no there be a

new union of hearts, there has really and truly been a new division of

tongues.

How are we to explain this singular truth, even if we deplore it? I

dismiss with fitting disdain the notion that it is a mere result of

military terrorism or snobbish social pressure. The Socialist leaders

of modern Europe are among the most sincere men in history; and their

Nationalist note in this affair has had the ring of their sincerity. I

will not waste time on the speculation that Vandervelde is bullied by

Belgian priests; or that Blatchford is frightened of the horse-guards

outside Whitehall. These great men support the enthusiasm of their

conventional countrymen because they share it; and they share it because

there is (though perhaps only at certain great moments) such a thing as

pure democracy.

Timour the Tartar, I think, celebrated some victory with a tower built

entirely out of human skulls; perhaps he thought that would reach to

heaven. But there is no cement in such building; the veins and ligaments

that hold humanity together have long fallen away; the skulls will roll

impotently at a touch; and ten thousand more such trophies could only

make the tower taller and crazier. I think the modern official apparatus

of “votes” is very like that tottering monument. I think the Tartar

“counted heads,” like an electioneering agent. Sometimes when I have

seen from the platform of some paltry party meeting the rows and rows of

grinning upturned faces, I have felt inclined to say, as the poet does

in the “The Vision of Sin”—“Welcome fellow-citizens, Hollow hearts and

empty heads.”

Not that the people were personally hollow or empty, but they had come

on a hollow and empty business: to help the good Mr. Binks to strengthen

the Insurance Act against the wicked Mr. Jinks who would only promise

to fortify the Insurance Act. That night it did not blow the democratic

gale. Yet it can blow on these as on others; and when it does blow men

learn many things. I, for one, am not above learning them.

The Marxian dogma which simplifies all conflicts to the Class War is so

much nobler a thing than the nose-counting of the parliaments that one

must apologise for the comparison. And yet there is a comparison.

When we used to say that there were so many thousands of Socialists

in Germany, we were counting by skulls. When we said that the majority

consisting of Proletarians would be everywhere opposed to the minority,

consisting of Capitalists, we were counting by skulls. Why, yes; if all

men’s heads had been cut off from the rest of them, as they were by the

good sense and foresight of Timour the Tartar; if they had no hearts or

bellies to be moved; no hand that flies up to ward off a weapon, no foot

that can feel a familiar soil—if things were so the Marxian calculation

would be not only complete but correct. As we know to-day, the Marxian

calculation is complete, but it is not correct.

Now, this is the answer to the questions of some kind critics, whose

actual words I have not within reach at the moment, about whether my

democracy meant the rule of the majority over the minority. It means the

rule of the rule—the rule of the rule over the exception. When a nation

finds a soul it clothes it with a body, and does verily act like one

living thing. There is nothing to be said about those who are out of it,

except that they are out of it. After talking about it in the abstract

for decades, this is Democracy, and it is marvellous in our eyes. It is

not the difference between ninety-nine persons and a hundred persons; it

is one person—the people. I do not know or care how many or how few of

the Belgians like or dislike the pictures of Wiertz. They could not be

either justified or condemned by a mere majority of Belgians. But I am

very certain that the defiance to Prussia did not come from a majority

of Belgians. It came from Belgium one and indivisible—atheists,

priests, princes of the blood, Frenchified shopkeepers, Flemish boors,

men, women, and children, and the sooner we understand that this sort of

thing can happen the better for us. For it is this spontaneous spiritual

fellowship of communities under certain conditions to which the four or

five most independent minds of Europe willingly bear witness to-day.

But is there no exception: is there no one faithful among the unfaithful

found? Is no great Socialist politician still untouched by the

patriotism of the vulgar? Why, yes; the rugged Ramsay MacDonald, scarred

with a hundred savage fights against the capitalist parties, still lifts

up his horny hand for peace. What further need have we of witnesses?

I, for my part, am quite satisfied, and do not doubt that Mr. MacDonald

will be as industrious in damping down democracy in this form as in

every other.

A REAL DANGER

Heaven forbid that I should once more wade in those swamps of logomachy

and tautology in which the old guard of the Determinists still seem to

be floundering. The question of Fate and Free Will can never attain to

a conclusion, though it may attain to a conviction. The shortest

philosophic summary is that both cause and choice are ultimate ideas

within us, and that if one man denies choice because it seems contrary

to cause, the other man has quite as much right to deny cause because

it seems contrary to choice. The shortest ethical summary is that

Determinism either affects conduct or it does not. If it does not, it is

morally not worth preaching; if it does, it must affect conduct in the

direction of impotence and submission. A writer in the “Clarion” says

that the reformer cannot help trying to reform, nor the Conservative

help his Conservatism. But suppose the reformer tries to reform the

Conservative and turn him into another reformer? Either he can, in which

case Determinism has made no difference at all, or he can’t, in which

case it can only have made reformers more hopeless and Conservatives

more obstinate. And the shortest practical and political summary is that

working men, most probably, will soon be much too busy using their Free

Will to stop to prove that they have got it. Nevertheless, I like to

watch the Determinist in the “Clarion” Cockpit every week, as busy as a

squirrel—in a cage. But being myself a squirrel (leaping lightly from

bough to bough) and preferring the form of activity which occasionally

ends in nuts, I should not intervene in the matter even indirectly,

except upon a practical point. And the point I have in mind is practical

to the extent of deadly peril. It is another of the numerous new ways in

which the restless rich, now walking the world with an awful insomnia,

may manage to catch us napping.

Must Be a Mystery

There are two letters in the “Clarion” this week which in various ways

interest me very much. One is concerned to defend Darwin against the

scientific revolt against him that was led by Samuel Butler, and among

other things it calls Bernard Shaw a back number. Well, most certainly

“The Origin of Species” is a back number, in so far as any honest and

interesting book ever can be; but in pure philosophy nothing can be

out of date, since the universe must be a mystery even to the believer.

There is, however, one condition of things in which I do call it

relevant to describe somebody as behind the times. That is when the man

in question, thinking of some state of affairs that has passed away, is

really helping the very things he would like to hinder. The principles

cannot alter, but the problems can. Thus, I should call a man behind the

times who, in the year 1872, pleaded for the peaceful German peasants

against the triumphant militarism of Napoleon. Or I should call a man

out of date who, in the year 1892, wished for a stronger Navy to compete

with the Navy of Holland, because it had once swept the sea and sailed

up the Thames. And I certainly call a man or a movement out of date

that, in the year 1914, when we few are fighting a giant machine,

strengthened with all material wealth and worked with all the material

sciences, thinks that our chief danger is from an excess of moral and

religious responsibility. He reminds me of Mr. Snodgrass, who had the

presence of mind to call out “Fire!” when Mr. Pickwick fell through the

ice.

The other letter consists of the usual wiredrawn argument for fatalism.

Man cannot imagine the universe being created, and therefore is

“compelled by his reason” to think the universe without beginning or

end, which (I may remark) he cannot imagine either. But the letter ends

with something much more ominous than bad metaphysics. Here, in

the middle of the “Clarion,” in the centre of a clean and combative

democratic sheet, I meet again my deplorable old acquaintance, the

scientific criminologist. “The so-called evil-doer should not be

punished for his acts, but restrained.” In forty-eight hours I could

probably get a petition to that effect signed by millionaires. A short

time ago a Bill was introduced to hold irresponsible and “restrain” a

whole new class of people, who were “incapable of managing their affairs

with prudence.” Read the supporters’ names on the back of that Bill, and

see what sort of democrats they were.

Now, clearing our heads of what is called popular science (which means

going to sleep to a lullaby of long words), let us use our own brains a

little, and ask ourselves what is the real difference between punishing

a man and restraining him. The material difference may be any or none;

for punishment may be very mild, and restraint may be very ruthless. The

man, of course, must dislike one as much as the other, or it would not

be necessary to restrain him at all. And I assure you he will get no

great glow of comfort out of your calling him irresponsible after you

have made him impotent. A man does not necessarily feel more free and

easy in a straight waistcoat than in a stone cell. The moral difference

is that a man can be punished for a crime because he is born a citizen;

while he can be constrained because he is born a slave. But one

arresting and tremendous difference towers over all these doubtful or

arguable differences. There is one respect, vital to all our liberties

and all our lives, in which the new restraint would be different

from the old punishment. It is of this that the plutocrats will take

advantage.

The Plain Difference

The perfectly plain difference is this. All punishment, even the most

horrible, proceeds upon the assumption that the extent of the evil is

known, and that a certain amount of expiation goes with it. Even if

you hang the man, you cannot hang him twice. Even if you burn him,

you cannot burn him for a month. And in the case of all ordinary

imprisonments, the whole aim of free institutions from the beginning of

the world has been to insist that a man shall be convicted of a definite

crime and confined for a definite period. But the moment you admit this

notion of medical restraint, you must in fairness admit that it may go

on as long as the authorities choose to think (or say) that it ought

to go on. The man’s punishment refers to the past, which is supposed

to have been investigated, and which, in some degree at least, has been

investigated. But his restraint refers to the future, which his doctors,

keepers, and wardens have yet to investigate. The simple result will be

that, in the scientific Utopia of the “Clarion,” men like Mann or Syme

or Larkin will not be put in prison because of what they have done.

They will be kept in prison because of what they might do. Indeed, the

builders of the new tyranny have already come very near to avowing

this scientific and futurist method. When the lawyers tried to stop the

“Suffragette” from appearing at all, they practically said: “We do not

know your next week’s crime, because it isn’t committed yet; but we are

scientifically certain you have the criminal type. And by the sublime

and unalterable laws of heredity, all your poor little papers will

inherit it.”

This is a purely practical question; and that is why I insist on it,

even in such strenuous times. The writers on the “Clarion” have a

perfect right to think Christianity is the foe of freedom, or even

that the stupidity and tyranny of the present Government is due to the

monkish mysticism of Lord Morley and Mr. John M. Robertson. They have a

right to think the theory of Determinism as true as Calvin thought it.

But I do not like seeing them walk straight into the enormous iron trap

set open by the Capitalists, who find it convenient to make our law even

more lawless than it is. The rich men want a scientist to write them a

lettre de cachet as a doctor writes a prescription. And so they wish

to seal up in a public gaol the scandals of a private asylum. Yes; the

writers on the “Clarion” are indeed claiming irresponsibility for human

beings. But it is the governments that will be irresponsible, not the

governed.

But I will tell them one small secret in conclusion. There is nothing

whatever wrong in the ancient and universal idea of Punishment—except

that we are not punishing the right people.

THE DREGS OF PURITANISM

One peculiarity of the genuine kind of enemy of the people is that his

slightest phrase is clamorous with all his sins. Pride, vain-glory, and

hypocrisy seem present in his very grammar; in his very verbs or adverbs

or prepositions, as well as in what he says, which is generally bad

enough. Thus I see that a Nonconformist pastor in Bromley has been

talking about the pathetic little presents of tobacco sent to the common

soldiers. This is how he talks about it. He is reported as having said,

“By the help of God, they wanted this cigarette business stopped.” How

one could write a volume on that sentence, a great thick volume called

“The Decline of the English Middle Class.” In taste, in style, in

philosophy, in feeling, in political project, the horrors of it are as

unfathomable as hell.

First, to begin with the trifle, note something slipshod and vague in

the mere verbiage, typical of those who prefer a catchword to a creed.

“This cigarette business” might mean anything. It might mean Messrs.

Salmon and Gluckstein’s business. But the pastor at Bromley will not

interfere with that, for the indignation of his school of thought, even

when it is sincere, always instinctively and unconsciously swerves

aside from anything that is rich and powerful like the partners in a big

business, and strikes instead something that is poor and nameless like

the soldiers in a trench. Nor does the expression make clear who “they”

are—whether the inhabitants of Britain or the inhabitants of Bromley,

or the inhabitants of this one crazy tabernacle in Bromley; nor is it

evident how it is going to be stopped or who is being asked to stop it.

All these things are trifles compared to the more terrible offences

of the phrase; but they are not without their social and historical

interest. About the beginning of the nineteenth century the wealthy

Puritan class, generally the class of the employers of labour, took a

line of argument which was narrow, but not nonsensical. They saw the

relation of rich and poor quite coldly as a contract, but they saw that

a contract holds both ways. The Puritans of the middle class, in short,

did in some sense start talking and thinking for themselves. They are

still talking. They have long ago left off thinking. They talk about the

loyalty of workmen to their employers, and God knows what rubbish; and

the first small certainty about the reverend gentleman whose sentence

I have quoted is that his brain stopped working as a clock stops, years

and years ago.

Second, consider the quality of the religious literature! These people

are always telling us that the English translated Bible is sufficient

training for anyone in noble and appropriate diction; and so it is. Why,

then, are they not trained? They are always telling us that Bunyan, the

rude Midland tinker, is as much worth reading as Chaucer or Spenser;

and so he is. Why, then, have they not read him? I cannot believe

that anyone who had seen, even in a nightmare of the nursery, Apollyon

straddling over the whole breadth of the way could really write like

that about a cigarette. By the help of God, they wanted this cigarette

business stopped. Therefore, with angels and archangels and the whole

company of Heaven, with St. Michael, smiter of Satan and Captain of

the Chivalry of God, with all the ardour of the seraphs and the flaming

patience of the saints, we will have this cigarette business stopped.

Where has all the tradition of the great religious literatures gone to

that a man should come on such a bathos with such a bump?

Thirdly, of course, there is the lack of imaginative proportion, which

rises into a sort of towering blasphemy. An enormous number of live

young men are being hurt by shells, hurt by bullets, hurt by fever

and hunger and horror of hope deferred; hurt by lance blades and sword

blades and bayonet blades breaking into the bloody house of life. But

Mr. Price (I think that’s his name) is still anxious that they should

not be hurt by cigarettes. That is the sort of maniacal isolation that

can be found in the deserts of Bromley. That cigarettes are bad for

the health is a very tenable opinion to which the minister is quite

entitled. If he happens to think that the youth of Bromley smoke too

many cigarettes, and that he has any influence in urging on them the

unhealthiness of the habit, I should not blame him if he gave sermons

or lectures about it (with magic-lantern slides), so long as it was in

Bromley and about Bromley. Cigarettes may be bad for the health: bombs

and bayonets and even barbed wire are not good for the health. I never

met a doctor who recommended any of them. But the trouble with this sort

of man is that he cannot adjust himself to the scale of things. He would

do very good service if he would go among the rich aristocratic ladies

and tell them not to take drugs in a chronic sense, as people take opium

in China. But he would be doing very bad service if he were to go among

the doctors and nurses on the field and tell them not to give drugs, as

they give morphia in a hospital. But it is the whole hypothesis of war,

it is its very nature and first principle, that the man in the trench

is almost as much a suffering and abnormal person as the man in the

hospital. Hit or unhit, conqueror or conquered, he is, by nature of the

case, having less pleasure than is proper and natural to a man.

Fourth (for I need not dwell here on the mere diabolical idiocy that can

regard beer or tobacco as in some way evil and unseemly in themselves),

there is the most important element in this strange outbreak; at least,

the most dangerous and the most important for us. There is that

main feature in the degradation of the old middle class: the utter

disappearance of its old appetite for liberty. Here there is no question

of whether the men are to smoke cigarettes, or the women choose to

send cigarettes, or even that the officers or doctors choose to allow

cigarettes. The thing is to cease, and we may note one of the most

recurrent ideas of the servile State: it is mentioned in the passive

mood. It must be stopped, and we must not even ask who has stopped it!

THE TYRANNY OF BAD JOURNALISM

The amazing decision of the Government to employ methods quite alien to

England, and rather belonging to the police of the Continent, probably

arises from the appearance of papers which are lucid and fighting, like

the papers of the Continent. The business may be put in many ways. But

one way of putting it is simply to say that a monopoly of bad journalism

is resisting the possibility of good journalism. Journalism is not the

same thing as literature; but there is good and bad journalism, as there

is good and bad literature, as there is good and bad football. For the

last twenty years or so the plutocrats who govern England have allowed

the English nothing but bad journalism. Very bad journalism, simply

considered as journalism.

It always takes a considerable time to see the simple and central fact

about anything. All sorts of things have been said about the modern

Press, especially the Yellow Press; that it is Jingo or Philistine or

sensational or wrongly inquisitive or vulgar or indecent or trivial; but

none of these have anything really to do with the point.

The point about the Press is that it is not what it is called. It is not

the “popular Press.” It is not the public Press. It is not an organ

of public opinion. It is a conspiracy of a very few millionaires, all

sufficiently similar in type to agree on the limits of what this great

nation (to which we belong) may know about itself and its friends and

enemies. The ring is not quite complete; there are old-fashioned and

honest papers: but it is sufficiently near to completion to produce on

the ordinary purchaser of news the practical effects of a corner and

a monopoly. He receives all his political information and all

his political marching orders from what is by this time a sort of

half-conscious secret society, with very few members, but a great deal

of money.

This enormous and essential fact is concealed for us by a number of

legends that have passed into common speech. There is the notion that

the Press is flashy or trivial because it is popular. In other words,

an attempt is made to discredit democracy by representing journalism

as the natural literature of democracy. All this is cold rubbish.

The democracy has no more to do with the papers than it has with the

peerages. The millionaire newspapers are vulgar and silly because the

millionaires are vulgar and silly. It is the proprietor, not the editor,

not the sub-editor, least of all the reader, who is pleased with this

monotonous prairie of printed words. The same slander on democracy can

be noticed in the case of advertisements. There is many a tender old

Tory imagination that vaguely feels that our streets would be hung with

escutcheons and tapestries, if only the profane vulgar had not hung them

with advertisements of Sapolio and Sunlight Soap. But advertisement does

not come from the unlettered many. It comes from the refined few.

Did you ever hear of a mob rising to placard the Town Hall with

proclamations in favour of Sapolio? Did you ever see a poor, ragged

man laboriously drawing and painting a picture on the wall in favour

of Sunlight Soap—simply as a labour of love? It is nonsense; those who

hang our public walls with ugly pictures are the same select few who

hang their private walls with exquisite and expensive pictures. The

vulgarisation of modern life has come from the governing class; from the

highly educated class. Most of the people who have posters in Camberwell

have peerages at Westminster. But the strongest instance of all is that

which has been unbroken until lately, and still largely prevails; the

ghastly monotony of the Press.

Then comes that other legend; the notion that men like the masters of

the Newspaper Trusts “give the people what they want.” Why, it is the

whole aim and definition of a Trust that it gives the people what it

chooses. In the old days, when Parliaments were free in England, it

was discovered that one courtier was allowed to sell all the silk, and

another to sell all the sweet wine. A member of the House of Commons

humorously asked who was allowed to sell all the bread. I really tremble

to think what that sarcastic legislator would have said if he had been

put off with the modern nonsense about “gauging the public taste.”

Suppose the first courtier had said that, by his shrewd, self-made

sense, he had detected that people had a vague desire for silk; and

even a deep, dim human desire to pay so much a yard for it! Suppose

the second courtier said that he had, by his own rugged intellect,

discovered a general desire for wine: and that people bought his wine

at his price—when they could buy no other! Suppose a third courtier had

jumped up and said that people always bought his bread when they could

get none anywhere else.

Well, that is a perfect parallel. “After bread, the need of the people

is knowledge,” said Danton. Knowledge is now a monopoly, and comes

through to the citizens in thin and selected streams, exactly as bread

might come through to a besieged city. Men must wish to know what is

happening, whoever has the privilege of telling them. They must listen

to the messenger, even if he is a liar. They must listen to the liar,

even if he is a bore. The official journalist for some time past has

been both a bore and a liar; but it was impossible until lately to

neglect his sheets of news altogether. Lately the capitalist Press

really has begun to be neglected; because its bad journalism was

overpowering and appalling. Lately we have really begun to find out that

capitalism cannot write, just as it cannot fight, or pray, or marry, or

make a joke, or do any other stricken human thing. But this discovery

has been quite recent. The capitalist newspaper was never actually

unread until it was actually unreadable.

If you retain the servile superstition that the Press, as run by the

capitalists, is popular (in any sense except that in which dirty water

in a desert is popular), consider the case of the solemn articles in

praise of the men who own newspapers—men of the type of Cadbury or

Harmsworth, men of the type of the small club of millionaires. Did you

ever hear a plain man in a tramcar or train talking about Carnegie’s

bright genial smile or Rothschild’s simple, easy hospitality? Did you

ever hear an ordinary citizen ask what was the opinion of Sir Joseph

Lyons about the hopes and fears of this, our native land? These few

small-minded men publish, papers to praise themselves. You could no more

get an intelligent poor man to praise a millionaire’s soul, except for

hire, than you could get him to sell a millionaire’s soap, except for

hire. And I repeat that, though there are other aspects of the matter of

the new plutocratic raid, one of the most important is mere journalistic

jealousy. The Yellow Press is bad journalism: and wishes to stop the

appearance of good journalism.

There is no average member of the public who would not prefer to have

Lloyd George discussed as what he is, a Welshman of genius and ideals,

strangely fascinated by bad fashion and bad finance, rather than

discussed as what neither he nor anyone else ever was, a perfect

democrat or an utterly detestable demagogue. There is no reader of a

daily paper who would not feel more concern—and more respect—for Sir

Rufus Isaacs as a man who has been a stockbroker, than as a man who

happens to be Attorney-General. There is no man in the street who is not

more interested in Lloyd George’s investments than in his Land Campaign.

There is no man in the street who could not understand (and like)

Rufus Isaacs as a Jew better than he can possibly like him as a British

statesman. There is no sane journalist alive who would say that the

official account of Marconis would be better “copy” than the true

account that such papers as this have dragged out. We have committed one

crime against the newspaper proprietor which he will never forgive. We

point out that his papers are dull. And we propose to print some papers

that are interesting.

THE POETRY OF THE REVOLUTION

Everyone but a consistent and contented capitalist, who must be

something pretty near to a Satanist, must rejoice at the spirit and

success of the Battle of the Buses. But one thing about it which happens

to please me particularly was that it was fought, in one aspect at

least, on a point such as the plutocratic fool calls unpractical. It

was fought about a symbol, a badge, a thing attended with no kind of

practical results, like the flags for which men allow themselves to fall

down dead, or the shrines for which men will walk some hundreds of miles

from their homes. When a man has an eye for business, all that goes on

on this earth in that style is simply invisible to him. But let us be

charitable to the eye for business; the eye has been pretty well blacked

this time.

But I wish to insist here that it is exactly what is called the

unpractical part of the thing that is really the practical. The chief

difference between men and the animals is that all men are artists;

though the overwhelming majority of us are bad artists. As the old fable

truly says, lions do not make statues; even the cunning of the fox can

go no further than the accomplishment of leaving an exact model of

the vulpine paw: and even that is an accomplishment which he wishes

he hadn’t got. There are Chryselephantine statues, but no purely

elephantine ones. And, though we speak in a general way of an elephant

trumpeting, it is only by human blandishments that he can be induced to

play the drum. But man, savage or civilised, simple or complex

always desires to see his own soul outside himself; in some material

embodiment. He always wishes to point to a table in a temple, or a cloth

on a stick, or a word on a scroll, or a badge on a coat, and say: “This

is the best part of me. If need be, it shall be the rest of me that

shall perish.” This is the method which seems so unbusinesslike to the

men with an eye to business. This is also the method by which battles

are won.

The Symbolism of the Badge

The badge on a Trade Unionist’s coat is a piece of poetry in the

genuine, lucid, and logical sense in which Milton defined poetry (and

he ought to know) when he said that it was simple, sensuous, and

passionate. It is simple, because many understand the word “badge,”

who might not even understand the word “recognition.” It is sensuous,

because it is visible and tangible; it is incarnate, as all the good

Gods have been; and it is passionate in this perfectly practical sense,

which the man with an eye to business may some day learn more thoroughly

than he likes, that there are men who will allow you to cross a word

out in a theoretical document, but who will not allow you to pull a big

button off their bodily clothing, merely because you have more money

than they have. Now I think it is this sensuousness, this passion, and,

above all, this simplicity that are most wanted in this promising revolt

of our time. For this simplicity is perhaps the only thing in which the

best type of recent revolutionists have failed. It has been our

sorrow lately to salute the sunset of one of the very few clean and

incorruptible careers in the most corruptible phase of Christendom. The

death of Quelch naturally turns one’s thoughts to those extreme Marxian

theorists, who, whatever we may hold about their philosophy, have

certainly held their honour like iron. And yet, even in this instant

of instinctive reverence, I cannot feel that they were poetical enough,

that is childish enough, to make a revolution. They had all the audacity

needed for speaking to the despot; but not the simplicity needed for

speaking to the democracy. They were always accused of being too bitter

against the capitalist. But it always seemed to me that they were (quite

unconsciously, of course) much too kind to him. They had a fatal habit

of using long words, even on occasions when he might with propriety have

been described in very short words. They called him a Capitalist when

almost anybody in Christendom would have called him a cad. And “cad”

is a word from the poetic vocabulary indicating rather a general and

powerful reaction of the emotions than a status that could be defined

in a work of economics. The capitalist, asleep in the sun, let such long

words crawl all over him, like so many long, soft, furry caterpillars.

Caterpillars cannot sting like wasps. And, in repeating that the old

Marxians have been, perhaps, the best and bravest men of our time, I say

also that they would have been better and braver still if they had never

used a scientific word, and never read anything but fairy tales.

The Beastly Individualist

Suppose I go on to a ship, and the ship sinks almost immediately; but

I (like the people in the Bab Ballads), by reason of my clinging to a

mast, upon a desert island am eventually cast. Or rather, suppose I am

not cast on it, but am kept bobbing about in the water, because the only

man on the island is what some call an Individualist, and will not throw

me a rope; though coils of rope of the most annoying elaboration and

neatness are conspicuous beside him as he stands upon the shore. Now,

it seems to me, that if, in my efforts to shout at this fellow-creature

across the crashing breakers, I call his position the “insularistic

position,” and my position “the semi-amphibian position,” much valuable

time may be lost. I am not an amphibian. I am a drowning man. He is

not an insularist, or an individualist. He is a beast. Or rather, he

is worse than any beast can be. And if, instead of letting me drown, he

makes me promise, while I am drowning, that if I come on shore it shall

be as his bodily slave, having no human claims henceforward forever,

then, by the whole theory and practice of capitalism, he becomes a

capitalist, he also becomes a cad.

Now, the language of poetry is simpler than that of prose; as anyone

can see who has read what the old-fashioned protestant used to call

confidently “his” Bible. And, being simpler, it is also truer; and,

being truer, it is also fiercer. And, for most of the infamies of our

time, there is really nothing plain enough, except the plain language of

poetry. Take, let us say, the ease of the recent railway disaster,

and the acquittal of the capitalists’ interest. It is not a scientific

problem for us to investigate. It is a crime committed before our eyes;

committed, perhaps, by blind men or maniacs, or men hypnotised, or men

in some other ways unconscious; but committed in broad daylight, so that

the corpse is bleeding on our door-step. Good lives were lost, because

good lives do not pay; and bad coals do pay. It seems simply impossible

to get any other meaning out of the matter except that. And, if in human

history there be anything simple and anything horrible, it seems to have

been present in this matter. If, even after some study and understanding

of the old religious passions which were the resurrection of Europe,

we cannot endure the extreme infamy of witches and heretics literally

burned alive—well, the people in this affair were quite as literally

burned alive. If, when we have really tried to extend our charity beyond

the borders of personal sympathy, to all the complexities of class

and creed, we still feel something insolent about the triumphant and

acquitted man who is in the wrong, here the men who are in the wrong are

triumphant and acquitted. It is no subject for science. It is a subject

for poetry. But for poetry of a terrible sort.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Utopia of Usurers and other Essays, by

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UTOPIA OF USURERS AND OTHER ESSAYS ***

***** This file should be named 2134.txt or 2134.zip *****

This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:

    http://www.gutenberg.org/2/1/3/2134/

Produced by Mike Pullen

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions

will be renamed.

Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no

one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation

(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without

permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,

set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to

copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to

protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project

Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you

charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you

do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the

rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose

such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and

research. They may be modified and printed and given away—you may do

practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is

subject to the trademark license, especially commercial

redistribution.

*** START: FULL LICENSE ***

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free

distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work

(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project

Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project

Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at

www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm

electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm

electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to

and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property

(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all

the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy

all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.

If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project

Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the

terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or

entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be

used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who

agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few

things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works

even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See

paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project

Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement

and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic

works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation”

or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project

Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the

collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an

individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are

located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from

copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative

works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg

are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project

Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by

freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of

this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with

the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by

keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project

Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern

what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in

a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check

the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement

before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or

creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project

Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning

the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United

States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate

access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently

whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the

phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project

Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,

copied or distributed:

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

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived

from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is

posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied

and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees

or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work

with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the

work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1

through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the

Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or

1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted

with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution

must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional

terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked

to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the

permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm

License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this

work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this

electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without

prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with

active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project

Gutenberg-tm License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,

compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any

word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or

distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than

“Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version

posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),

you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a

copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon

request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other

form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm

License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,

performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works

unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing

access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided

that

You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from

the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method

you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is

owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he

has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the

Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments

must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you

prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax

returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and

sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the

address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to

the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”
You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies

you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he

does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm

License. You must require such a user to return or

destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium

and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of

Project Gutenberg-tm works.
You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any

money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the

electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days

of receipt of the work.
You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free

distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm

electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set

forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from

both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael

Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the

Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable

effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread

public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm

collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic

works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain

“Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or

corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual

property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a

computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by

your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right

of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project

Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project

Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project

Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all

liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal

fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT

LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE

PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE

TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE

LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR

INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH

DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a

defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can

receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a

written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you

received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with

your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with

the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a

refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity

providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to

receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy

is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further

opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth

in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO OTHER

WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO

WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied

warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.

If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the

law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be

interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by

the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any

provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the

trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone

providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance

with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,

promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,

harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,

that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do

or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm

work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any

Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm

Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of

electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers

including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists

because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from

people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the

assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm’s

goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will

remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project

Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure

and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.

To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4

and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive

Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit

501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the

state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal

Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification

number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg

Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent

permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.

Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered

throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at 809

North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email

contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the

Foundation’s web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

For additional contact information:

 Dr. Gregory B. Newby

 Chief Executive and Director

 gbnewby@pglaf.org

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg

Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide

spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of

increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be

freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest

array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations

( $1 t o$ 5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt

status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating

charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United

States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a

considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up

with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations

where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To

SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any

particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we

have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition

against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who

approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make

any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from

outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation

methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other

ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.

To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic

works.

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm

concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared

with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project

Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed

editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.

unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily

keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:

 www.gutenberg.org

This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,

including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary

Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to

subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.

English Literature — A Knowledge Graph

Explorer

Utopia of Usurers

UtopiaUsurers

Capitoli / Chapters

Connections

Testo integrale / Full text

Graph View