 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. All Things Considered by G. K. Chesterton. Section 4. The Zola Controversy The difference between two great nations can be illustrated by the coincidence that at this moment both France and England are engaged in discussing the memorial of a literary man. France is considering the celebration of the late Zola. England is considering that of the recently deceased Shakespeare. There are some national significance. It may be, in the time that has elapsed, some will find impatience and indelicacy in this early attack on Zola or deification of him. But the nation which has sat still for 300 years after Shakespeare's funeral may be considered perhaps to have carried delicacy too far. But much deeper things are involved than the mere matter of time. The point of the contrast is that the French are discussing whether there should be any monument while the English are discussing only what the monument shall be. In other words, the French are discussing a living question while we are discussing a dead one. Or rather, not a dead one, but a settled one, which is quite a different thing. When a thing of the intellect is settled, it is not dead, rather it is immortal. The multiplication table is immortal, and so is the fame of Shakespeare. But the fame of Zola is not dead or not immortal. It is at its crisis. It is in the balance, and may be found wanting. The French, therefore, are quite right in considering it a living question. It is still living as a question, because it is not yet solved. But Shakespeare is not a living question. He is a living answer. For my part, therefore, I think the French Zola controversy is much more practical and exciting than the English Shakespeare one. The admission of Zola to the pantheon may be regarded as defining Zola's position. But nobody could say that a statue of Shakespeare, even 50 feet high, on the top of St. Paul's Cathedral, could define Shakespeare's position. It only defines our position toward Shakespeare. It is he who is fixed. It is we who are unstable. The nearest approach to an English parallel to the Zola case would be furnished if it were proposed to put some savagely controversial and largely repulsive author among the ashes of the great English poets. Suppose, for instance, it were proposed to bury Mr. Rudyard Kipling in Westminster Abbey. I should be against burying him in Westminster Abbey. First, because he is still alive, and here I think even he himself might admit the justice of my protest. And second, because I should like to reserve that rapidly narrowing space for the great permanent examples, not for the interesting foreign interruptions of English literature. I would not have either Mr. Kipling or Mr. George Moore in Westminster Abbey, though Mr. Kipling has certainly caught even more cleverly than Mr. Moore the lucid and cool cruelty of the French short story. I'm very sure that Geoffrey Chaucer and Joseph Addison get on very well together in the poet's corner, despite the centuries that's under them. But I feel that Mr. George Moore with the most happier, in Pierre Lechize, with a riotous statue by Rodin on the top of him, and Mr. Kipling much happier under some huge Asiatic monument carved with all the cruelties of the gods. As to the affair of the English monument to Shakespeare, every people has its own mode of commemoration, and I think there is a great deal to be said for ours. There is the French monumental style, which consists in erecting very pompous statues, very well done. There is the German monumental style, which consists in erecting very pompous statues, badly done. And there is the English monumental method, the great English way with statues, which consists in not erecting them at all. The statue may be dignified, but the absence of a statue is always dignified. For my part, I feel there is something national, something wholesomely symbolic in the fact that there is no statue of Shakespeare. There is, of course, one in Lechester Square, but the very place where it stands shows that it was put up by a foreigner for foreigners. There is surely something modest and manly about not attempting to express our greatest poets in the plastic arts in which we do not excel. We honor Shakespeare as the Jews honor God by not daring to make of him a graven image. Our sculpture, our statues, are good enough for bankers and philanthropists who are our curse, not good enough for him who is our benediction. Why should we celebrate the very art in which we triumph by the very art in which we fail? England is most easily understood as the country of amateurs. It is especially the country of amateur soldiers, that is the volunteers of amateur statesmen, that is the aristocrats, and it is not unreasonable or out of keeping that it should be rather specially the country of a careless and lounging view of literature. Shakespeare has no academic monument for the same reason that he had no academic education. He had small Latin and less Greek, and in the same spirit he has never been commemorated in Latin epithets or Greek marble. If there is nothing clear and fixed about the emblems of his fame, it is because there was nothing clear and fixed about the origins of it. Those great schools and universities which watch a man in his youth may record him in his death, but Shakespeare had no such unifying traditions. We can only say of him what we can say of Dickens. We can only say that he came from nowhere and that he went everywhere. For him a monument in any place is out of place. A cold statue in a certain square is unsuitable to him as it would be unsuitable to Dickens. If we put up a statue of Dickens in Portland Place tomorrow, we should feel the stiffness is unnatural. We should fear that the statue might stroll about the street at night. But in France the question of whether Zola shall go to the pantheon when he is dead is quite as practicable as the question whether he should go to prison when he was alive. It is the problem of whether the nation shall take one turn of thought or another. In raising a monument to Zola they do not raise merely a trophy but a finger post. The question is one which will have to be settled in most European countries, but like all such questions it has come first to a head in France because France is the battlefield of Christendom. That question is of course roughly this. Whether in that ill-defined area of verbal license on certain dangerous topics it is an extenuation of indelicacy or an aggravation of it that the indelicacy was deliberate and solemn. Is indecency more indecent if it is grave or more indecent if it is gay? For my part I belong to an old school in this matter. When a book or play strikes me as a crime I am not disarmed by being told that it is a serious crime. If a man has written something vile I am not comforted by the explanation that he quite meant to do it. I know all the evils of flippancy. I do not like the man who laughs at the sight of virtue but I prefer him to the man who weeps at the sight of virtue and complains bitterly of their being any such thing. I am not reassured when ethics are as wild as cannibalism by the fact that they are also as grave and sincere as suicide. And I think there is an obvious fallacy in the bitter contrast drawn by some moderns between the aversion to Ibsen's ghosts and the popularity of some such joke as Dear Old Charlie. Surely there is nothing mysterious or unphilosophic in the popular's reference. The joke of Dear Old Charlie is past because it is a joke. Ghosts are exercised because they are ghosts. This is, of course, the whole question of Zola. I am grown up and I do not worry myself much about Zola's immorality. The thing I cannot stand is his morality. If ever a man on this earth lived to embody the tremendous text but if the light in your body be darkness, how great is the darkness? It was certainly he. Great men like Eristo, Rabila and Shakespeare fall in foul places, flounder and violent but venial sin, sprawl for pages exposing their gigantic weaknesses, are dirty, are indefensible and then they struggle up again and can still speak with a convincing kindness and an unbroken honor of the best things in the world. Rabila of the instruction of ardent and austere youth, Eristo of holy chivalry, Shakespeare of the splendid stillness of mercy. But in Zola even the ideals are undesirable. Zola's mercy is colder than justice. By the way, Zola's mercy is more bitter in the mouth than injustice. When Zola shows us an ideal training he does not take us like Rabila into the happy fields of humanist learning. He takes us into the schools of inhumanist learning where there are neither books nor flowers nor wine nor wisdom but only deformities in glass bottles and where the rule is taught from the exceptions. Zola's truth answers the exact description of the skeleton in the cupboard. That is, it is something of which a domestic custom forbids the discovery but which is quite dead, even when it is discovered. Macaulay said that the Puritans hated bear-baiting not because it gave pain to the bear but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. Of such substance also was this Puritan who had lost his god. A Puritan of this type is worse than the Puritan who hates pleasure because there is evil in it. This man actually hates evil because there is pleasure in it. Zola was worse than a pornographer. He was a pessimist. He did worse than encourage sin. He encouraged discouragement. He made lust loathsome because to him lust meant life. Oxford from without. Some time ago I ventured to defend that race of hunted and persecuted outlaws, the bishops. But until this week I had no idea of how much persecuted they were. For instance, the Bishop of Birmingham made some extremely sensible remarks in the House of Lord to the effect that Oxford and Cambridge were, as everybody knows they are, far too much merely plutocratic playgrounds. One would have thought that an Anglican bishop might be allowed to know something about the English university system and even to have, if anything, some bias in its favour. But as I pointed out, the rollicking radicalism of bishops has to be restrained. The man who writes the notes in this weekly paper called The Outlook feels that it is his business to restrain it. The passage has such a simple sublimity that I must quote it. Dr. Gore talked unworthily of his reputation when he spoke of the older universities as playgrounds for the rich and idle. In the first place the rich men there are not idle. Some of the rich men are, and so some of the poor men. On the whole the sons of noble and wealthy families keep up the best traditions of academic life. So far this seems all very nice. It is a part of the universal principle on which Englishmen have acted in recent years. As you will not try to make the best people, the most powerful people, persuade yourselves that the most powerful people are the best people. Mad Frenchmen and Irishmen try to realize the ideal. To you belongs the nobler and much easier task of idealizing the real. First give your universities entirely into the power of the rich. Then let the rich start traditions and then congratulate yourself on the fact that the sons of the rich keep up these traditions. All that is quite simple and jolly. But then this critic who crushes Dr. Gore from the high throne of the outlook goes on in a way that is really perplexing. It is distinctly advantageous, he says, that rich and poor, example young men with smooth path in life before them and those who have to hew out a road for themselves, should be brought into association. Each class learns a great deal from the other On the one side, social conceit and exclusiveness gives way to the free spirit of competition among all classes. On the other side, angularities and prejudices are rubbed away. Even this I might have swallowed. But the paragraph concludes with this extraordinary sentence. We get the net result in such careers as those of Lord Milner, Lord Curzon and Mr. Asquith. Those three names lay my intellect prostrate. The rest of the argument I understand quite well. The social exclusiveness of aristocrats at Oxford and Cambridge gives way before the free spirit of competition among all classes. That is to say, there is at Oxford so hot and keen a struggle consisting of coal heavers, London clerks, gypsies, navvies, drapers, assistants, grocers assistants, short all the classes that make up the bulk of England. There is such a fierce competition at Oxford among all these people that in its presence aristocratic exclusiveness gives way. That is all quite clear. I'm not quite sure about the facts, but I quite understand the argument. But then having been called upon to contemplate this bracing picture of a boisterous turmoil of all the classes of England, I am suddenly asked to accept as example of it Lord Milner, Lord Curson, and the present Chancellor of the Exchequer. What part do these gentlemen play in the mental process? Is Lord Curson one of the rugged and ragged poor men whose angularities have been rubbed away? Or is he one of those whom Oxford immediately deprived of all kind of social exclusiveness? His Oxford reputation does not seem to bear out either account of him. To regard Lord Milner as a typical product of Oxford would surely be unfair. It would be to deprive the educational tradition of Germany of one of its most typical products. English aristocrats have their faults, but they are not at all like Lord Milner. What Mr. Asquith was meant to prove, whether he was a rich man who lost his exclusiveness or a poor man who lost his angles, I am utterly unable to conceive. There is however one mild but very evident truth that might perhaps be mentioned, and it is this, that none of those three excellent persons is or ever has been a poor man in the sense that the word is understood by the overwhelming majority of the English nation. There are no poor men at Oxford in the sense that the majority of men in the street are poor. The very fact that the writer in the outlook can talk about such people as poor shows that he does not understand what the modern problem is. His kind of poor man rather reminds me of the Earl in the ballad by the great English satirist, Sir W. S. Gilbert, whose angles, very acute angles, had I fear never been rubbed down by an old English university. The reader will remember that when the Perry Winkle girl was adored by two dukes, the poet added, a third adorer had the girl, a man of lowly station, a miserable, groveling Earl, be sought her approbation. Perhaps indeed some allusion to our university system and to the universal clash in it of all the clashes of the community may be found in the verse a little further on, which says, he'd had, it happily befell, a decent education. His use would have befitted well a far superior station. Possibly there was as simple a chasm between Lord Kazan and Lord Milner. But I'm afraid that the chasm will become almost imperceptible, a microscopic crack, if we compare it with the chasm that separates either or both of them from the people of this country. Of course the truth is exactly as the Bishop of Birmingham put it. I am sure that he did not put it in any unkindly or contemptuous spirit toward those old English seats of learning, which, whether they are or not seats of learning did any rate old in English. And those are two very good things to be. The old English university is a playground for the governing class that does not prove that it is a bad thing. It might prove that it was a very good thing. Certainly if there is a governing class let there be a playground for the governing class. I would much rather be ruled by men who know how to play than by men who do not know how to play. But we are to be governed by a rich section of the community. It is certainly very important that the section should be kept tolerably genial and jolly. If the sensitive man on the outlook does not like the playground of the rich I can suggest a phrase that describes such a place as Oxford perhaps with more precision. It is a place for humanizing those who might otherwise be tyrants or even experts. To pretend that the aristocrat meets all classes at Oxford is too ludicrous to be worth discussion. But it may be true that he meets more different kinds of men than he would meet under a strictly aristocratic regime of private tutors and small schools. It all comes back to the fact that the English, if they were resolved to have an aristocracy were at least resolved to have a good natured aristocracy. And it is due to them to say that almost alone among the peoples of the world they have succeeded in getting one. One could almost tolerate the thing if it were not for the praise of it. One might endure Oxford but not the outlook. When the poor man at Oxford loses his ankles which means I suppose his independence he may perhaps even if his poverty is of that highly relative type possible at Oxford gain a certain amount of worldly advantage from the surrender of those ankles. I must confess however that I can imagine nothing nastier than to lose one's ankles. It seems to me that a desire to retain some ankles about one's person is a desire common to all those human beings who do not set their ultimate hopes upon looking like Humpty Dumpty. Our ankles are simply our shapes. I cannot imagine any phrase more full of the subtle and exquisite vileness which is poisoning and weakening our country such a phrase as this about the desirability of rubbing down the angularities of poor men. Reduced to permanent and practical human speech it means nothing whatever except the corrupting of that very first human sense of justice which is the critic of all human institutions. It is not in any such spirit of facile and reckless assurance that we should approach the really difficult problem of the delicate virtues and deep dangers of our two historic seats of learning. A good son does not easily admit that his sick mother is dying but neither does a good son cheerly assert that she is all right. There are many good arguments for leaving the two historic universities exactly as they are. There are many good arguments for smashing them or altering them entirely. But in either case the plain truth told by the bishop of Birmingham remains. If these universities were destroyed they would not be destroyed as universities. If they are preserved they will not be preserved as universities. They will be preserved strictly and literally as playgrounds, places valued for their hours of leisure more than for their hours of work. I do not say that this is unreasonable as a matter of private temperament I find it attractive. It is not only possible to say a great deal in praise of play it is really possible to say the highest things in praise of it. It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden. Heaven is a playground. To be at last in such secure innocence that one can juggle with the universe and the stars is to be so good that one can treat everything as a joke. That may be perhaps the real end and final holiday of human souls. When we are really holy we may regard the universe as a lark. So perhaps it is not essentially wrong to regard the university as a lark. But the plain and present fact is that our upper classes do regard the university as a lark and do not regard it as a university. It also happens very often that through some oversight they neglect to provide themselves with that extreme degree of holiness which I have postulated as a necessary preliminary to such indulgence in the higher frivolity. Humanity, always dreaming of a happy race, free, fantastic entities, has sometimes pictured them in some mystical island, sometimes in some celestial city, sometimes as fairies, gods or citizens of Atlantis. But one method in which it has often indulged is to picture them as aristocrats, as a special human class that could actually be seen hunting in the woods or driving about the streets. And this never was, as some silly Germans say, a worship of pride and scorn. Mankind never really admired pride. Mankind never had anything but scorn for scorn. It was a worship of the spectacle of happiness, especially of the spectacle of youth. This is what the old universities in their noblest aspect really are. And this is why there is always something to be said for keeping them as they are. Aristocracy is not a tyranny. It is not even merely a spell. It is a vision. It is a deliberate indulgence in a certain picture of pleasure painted for the purpose. She is, in an innocent sense, painted like Gainsborough's Duchess of Devonshire. She is only beautiful because, at the back of all, the English people wanted her to be beautiful. In the same way, the lads at Oxford and Cambridge are only larking, because England, in the depths of its solemn soul, really wishes them to lark. All this is very human and partnerable, and would even be no such things in the world as danger and honor and intellectual responsibility. But a veristocracy is a vision. It is perhaps the most unpractical of all visions. It is not a working way of doing things to put all your happiest people on a lighted platform and stare only at them. It is not a working way of managing education to be entirely content with the mere fact that you have, to a degree, unexampled in the world, given the luckiest boys the jolliest time. It would be easy enough, like the writer in The Outlook, to enjoy the pleasures and deny the perils. Oh, what a happy place England would be to live in if only one did not love it. Woman, a correspondent has written me an able and interesting letter. In the matter of some illusions of mine to the subject of communal kitchens he defends communal kitchens very lucidly from the standpoint of the calculating collectivist. But like many of his school he cannot apparently grasp that there is another test of the whole matter with which such calculation has nothing at all to do. He knows it would be cheaper if a number of us ate at the same time so as to use the same table. It would. It would also be cheaper if a number of us slept at different times so as to use the same pair of trousers. But the question is not how cheap are we buying a thing but what are we buying? It is cheap to own a slave and it is cheaper still to be a slave. My correspondent also says that the habit of dining out in restaurants etc. is growing so I believe is the habit of committing suicide. I do not desire to connect the two facts together. It seems fairly clear that a man could not dine at a restaurant because he had just committed suicide and it would be extreme perhaps to suggest that he commits suicide because he has just dined at a restaurant. But the two cases, when put side by side are enough to indicate the falsity and paltrunity of this eternal modern argument from what is in fashion. The question for brave men is not whether a certain thing is increasing. The question is whether we are increasing it. I dined very often in restaurants because the nature of my trade makes it convenient but if I thought that by dining in restaurants I was working for the creation of communal meals I would never enter a restaurant again. I would carry bread and cheese in my pocket or eat chocolate out of automatic machines for the personal element and some things is sacred. I heard Mr. Will Crooks put it perfectly the other day. The most sacred thing is to be able to shut your own door. My court of spondans says would not our women be spared the drudgery of cooking and all its attendant worries leaving them free for a higher culture? The first thing that occurs to me to say about this is very simple and is, I imagine, all our experience. If my correspondent can find any way of preventing women from worrying he will indeed be a remarkable man. I think the matter is a much deeper one. First of all my correspondent overlooks the distinction which is elementary in our human nature. Theoretically I suppose everyone would like to be freed from worries but nobody in the world would always like to be freed from worrying occupations. I should very much like as far as my feelings at the moment go to be freed from the consuming nuisance of writing this article but it does not follow that I should like to be freed from the consuming nuisance of being a journalist because we are worried about a thing it does not follow that we are not interested in it. The truth is the other way around. The truth is the other way if we are not interested we would be worried. Women are worried about housekeeping but those that are most interested are the most worried. Women are still more worried about their husbands and their children and I suppose if we strangled the children and Paul asked the husbands it would leave women free for higher culture that is it would leave them free to begin to worry about that for women would worry about higher culture as much as they worry about everything else. I believe talking about women and their higher culture is almost entirely a growth of the classes which, unlike the journalistic class to which I belong have always a reasonable amount of money. One odd thing I especially notice, those who write like this seem entirely forget the existence of the working and wage earning classes. They say eternally like my correspondent that the ordinary woman is always a drudge and what in the name of the nine gods is the ordinary man. These people seem to think that the ordinary man is a cabinet minister. They're always talking about a man going forth to wield power to carve his own way to stamp his individuality on the world to command and to be obeyed. This may be true of a certain class dukes perhaps are not drudges but then neither are duchesses. The ladies and gentlemen of the smart set are quite free for the higher culture chiefly of motoring and bridge but the ordinary man who typifies and constitutes the millions that make up our civilization is no more free for the higher culture than his wife is. Indeed he is not so free of the two sexes the woman is the more powerful position for the average woman is at the head of something with which she can do as she likes the average man has to obey orders and do nothing else he has to put one dull brick on another dull brick and do nothing else he has to add one dull figure to another dull figure and do nothing else the woman's world is a small one perhaps but she can't alter it the woman can tell the tradesman with whom she deals some realistic things about himself the clerk who does this to the manager generally gets the sack or shall we say to avoid the vulgarism finds himself free for the higher culture above all as I said in my previous article the woman does work which is in some small degree creative and individual she can put the flowers or the furniture in fancy arrangements of her own I fear the brick layer cannot put the bricks in fancy arrangements of his own without disaster to himself and others if the woman is only putting a patch into a carpet she can choose the thing with regard to color I fear it would not do for the office boy dispatching a partial to choose his stamps with a view to color to prefer the tender mauve of the six penny to the crude scarlet of the penny stamp a woman cooking may not always cook artistically still she can cook artistically she can introduce a personal and imperceptible alteration into the composition of a soup the clerk is not encouraged to introduce a personal and imperceptible alteration into the figures in a ledger the trouble is yet the real question I raised is not discussed it is argued as a problem in pennies not as a problem in people it is not the proposals of these performers that I feel to be false so much as their temper and their arguments I am not nearly so certain that communal kitchens are wrong as I am that the defenders of communal kitchens are wrong one thing there is a vast difference between the communal kitchens of which I spoke and the communal Neil monstrous horrendum inform which the darker and wilder mind of my correspondent diabolically calls up but in both the trouble is that their defenders will not defend them humanly as human institutions they will not interest themselves in the staring psychological fact that there are some things that a man or a woman as the case may be wishes to do for himself or herself he or she must do it inventively creatively, artistically, individually in a word badly choosing your wife say is one of these things is choosing your husband's dinner one of these things that's the whole question it's never asked and then the higher culture I know that culture I would not set any man free for it if I could help it the effect of it on the rich man who are free for it is so horrible that it is worse than any of the other amusements of the millionaire worse than gambling worse even than philanthropy it means thinking the smallest poet in Belgium greater than the greatest poet in England it means losing every democratic sympathy it means being unable to talk to a navvy about sport or about beer or about the Bible or about the derby or about patriotism or about anything whatever that he the navvy wants to talk about it means taking literature seriously a very amateurish thing to do it means pardoning and decency only when it is gloomy and decency it's disciples will call a spade a spade but only when it is a grave digger spade the higher culture is sad cheap, impudent, unkind without honesty and without ease in short it is high that abominable word also applied to game admirably describes it no, if you were setting women free for something else I might be more melted if you can assure me privately and gravely that you are setting women free to dance on the mountains like menades or to worship some monstrous goddess I will make a note of your request if you are quite sure that the ladies in Brixton the moment they give up cooking will bear great gongs and blowhorns and mumbo jumbo then I will agree that the occupation is at least human and is more or less entertaining women have been set free to be bachonites they have been set free to be virgin martyrs they have been set free to be witches do not ask them now to sing so low as the higher culture I have my own little notions of the possible emancipation of women but I suppose I should not be taken very seriously if I propounded them I should favor anything that would increase the present enormous authority of women and their creative action in their own homes the average woman as I have said is a despot, the average man is a serf I am for any scheme I suggest that we will make the average woman more of a despot so far from wishing her to get her cooked meals from outside I should like her to cook more wildly and at her own will than she does so far from getting always the same meals from the same place let her invent if she likes a new dish every day of her life did women be more of a maker not less a right to talk about women only black arts talk about women yet all men talk about men and that is the whole difference men represent the deliberative and democratic element in life women represents the despotic end of section 4 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org all things considered by G. K. Chesterton section 5 The Modern Martyr the incident of the suffragettes who chained themselves with iron chains to the railings of Downing Street is a good ironical allegory of most modern martyrdom it generally consists of a man chaining himself up and then complaining that he is not free some say that such larks retard the cause of female suffrage others say that such larks alone can advance it as a matter of fact I do not believe that they have the smallest effect one way or the other the modern notion of impressing the public by a mere demonstration of unpopularity by being thrown out of meetings or thrown into jail is largely a mistake it rests on a fallacy touching the true popular value of martyrdom people look at human history and see that it has often happened that persecutions have not only advertised but even advanced a persecuted creed and given to its validity the public and dreadful witness of dying men the paradox was pictorially expressed in Christian art in which saints were shown brandishing as weapons the very tools that had slain them and because his martyrdom is thus a power to the martyr modern people think that anyone who makes himself slightly uncomfortable in public will immediately be uproariously popular this element of inadequate martyrdom is not true only of the suffragettes it is true of many movements I respect and some I agree with it was true for instance of the passive resistors who had pieces of their furniture sold up the assumption is that if you show your ordinary sincerity or even your political ambition by being a nuisance to yourself as well as to other people you will have the strength of the great saints who pass through the fire anyone who can be hustled in a hall for five minutes or put in a cell for five days has achieved what was meant by martyrdom and has a halo in the Christian art of the future Miss Pankhurst will be represented holding a policeman in each hand the instruments of her martyrdom the passive resistor will be shown symbolically carrying the teapot that was torn from him by tyrannical auctioneers but there is a fallacy in this analogy of martyrdom the truth is that the special impressiveness which does come from being persecuted only happens in the case of extreme persecution for the fact that modern enthusiasts will undergo some inconvenience for the creed he holds only proves that he does hold it which no one ever doubted no one doubts that the nonconformist minister cares more for nonconformity than he does for his teapot the doubts that Miss Pankhurst wants a vote more than she wants a quiet afternoon and an armchair all our ordinary intellectual opinions are worth a bit of a row I remember during the Boer War fighting an imperialist clerk outside the Queen's Hall and giving and receiving a bloody nose but I did not think it one of the incidents that produced the psychological effect of the Roman amphitheater or the stake at Smithfield for that impression there is something more than the mere fact that a man is sincere enough to give his time or his comfort pagans were not impressed by the torture of Christians merely because it showed that they honestly held their opinion they knew that millions of people honestly held all sorts of opinions the point of such extreme martyrdom is much more subtle it is that it gives an appearance of a man having something quite specially strong to back him up of his drawing upon some power and this can only be proved when all his physical contentment is destroyed when all the current of his bodily being is reversed and turned to pain if a man is seen to be roaring with laughter all the time that he is skinned alive it would not be unreasonable to deduce that somewhere in the recesses of his mind a rather good joke similarly if men smiled and sang as they did while they were being boiled or torn to pieces the spectators felt the presence of something more than mere mental honesty they felt the presence of some new and unintelligible kind of pleasure which presumably came from somewhere it might be a strength of madness or a lying spirit from hell but it was something quite positive and extraordinary as positive as Brandy and as extraordinary as conjuring the pagan said to himself if Christianity makes a man happy while his legs are being eaten by a lion might it not make me happy while my legs are still attached to me and walking down the street the secularists laboriously explained that martyrdoms do not prove to be true as if anybody was ever such a fool as to suppose that they did what they did prove or rather strongly suggest was that something had entered human psychology which was stronger than strong pain if a young girl scourged and bleeding to death saw nothing but a crown descending on her from God the first mental step was not that her philosophy was correct she was certainly feeding on something but this particular point of psychology does not arise at all in the modern cases of mere public discomfort or inconvenience the causes of Miss Pankhurst's cheerfulness require no mystical explanations if she were being burned alive as a witch if she then looked up in unmixed rapture and saw a ballot box descending out of heaven then I should say that the incident though not conclusive was frightfully impressive it would not prove logically that she ought to have the vote or that anybody ought to have the vote but it would prove this that there was for some reason a sacramental reality in the vote that the soul could take the vote and feed on it and that it was in itself a positive and overpowering pleasure capable of being pitted against positive and overpowering pain I should advise modern agitators therefore to give up this particular method the method of making very big efforts to get a very small punishment it does not really go down at all the punishment is too small and the efforts are too obvious it has not any of the effectiveness of the old savage martyrdom because it does not leave the victim absolutely alone with his cause so that his cause alone can support him at the same time it has about it that element of the pantomimic and the absurd which was the cruelest part of the slaying and mocking of the real prophets St. Peter was crucified upside down as a huge inhuman joke but his human seriousness survived the inhuman joke because in whatever posture he had died for his faith the modern martyr of Pankhurst type reports the absurdity without making the suffering strong enough to eclipse the absurdity she is like St. Peter who should deliberately stand on his head for 10 seconds and then expect to be canonized for it or again the matter might be put this way modern martyrdoms fail even as demonstrations because they do not prove even that the martyrs are completely serious I think as a fact the modern martyrs generally are serious perhaps a trifle too serious but their martyrdom does not prove it and the public does not always believe it undoubtedly as a fact Dr. Clifford is quite honorably indignant with what he considers to be clericalism but he does not prove it by having his teapot sold for a man might easily have his teapot sold as an actress has her diamond stolen as a personal advertisement as a matter of fact Miss Pankhurst is quite in earnest about votes for women but she does not prove it by being chucked out of meetings a person might be chucked out of meetings just as young men are chucked out of music halls for fun but no man has himself eaten by a lion as a personal advertisement no woman is broiled on a gridiron for fun that is where the testimony of St. Perpetua and St. Faith comes in doubtless it is no fault of these enthusiasts that they are not subjected to the old and searching penalties very likely they would pass through them as triumphantly as St. Agatha I am simply advising them upon a point of policy things being as they are and I say that the average man is not impressed with their sacrifices simply because they are not and cannot be more decisive than the sacrifices which the average man himself would make for mere fun if he were drunk drunkards would interrupt meetings and take the consequences and as for selling a teapot it is an act I imagine in which any properly constituted drunkard would take a positive pleasure the advertisement is not good enough it does not tell if I were really martyred for an opinion which is more improbable than words can say it would certainly only be for one or two of my most central and sacred opinions I might perhaps be shot for England but certainly not for the British Empire I might conceivably die for political freedom but I certainly wouldn't die for free trade but as for kicking up the particular kind of shindy that the suffragettes are kicking up I would as soon do it for my shallowest opinion as for my deepest one it never could be anything worse than an inconvenience it never could be anything better than a spree hence the British public and especially the working classes regard the whole demonstration with fundamental indifference for a while it is a demonstration that probably is adopted from the most fanatical motives it is a demonstration which might be adopted from the most frivolous on political secrecy generally instinctively in the absence of any special reason humanity hates the idea of anything being hidden that is it hates the idea of anything being successfully hidden hide and seek is a popular pastime but it assumes the truth of the text seek and ye shall find Mary mankind gigantic and unconquerable in its power of joy can get a great deal of pleasure out of a game called hide the thimble but that is only because it is really a game of see the thimble suppose that at the end of such a game the thimble had not been found at all suppose this place was unknown forever the result on the players would not be playful it would be tragic that thimble would override all their dreams they would all die in asylums the pleasure is all in the poignant moment of passing from not knowing to knowing mystery stories are very popular especially when sold at 6 pence but that is because the author of a mystery story reveals he is enjoyed not because he creates mystery but because he destroys mystery nobody would have the courage to publish the detective story probably exactly where it found it that would arouse even the London public to revolution no one dare publish the detective story that did not detect there are three broad classes of the special things in which human wisdom does permit privacy the first is the case I have mentioned that of hide and seek or the police novel in which it permits privacy only in order to explode and smash privacy makes first a fastidious secret of how the bishop was murdered only in order that he may at last declare as from a high tower to the whole democracy the great glad news that he was murdered by the governess in that case ignorance is only valued because being ignorant is the best and purest preparation for receiving the horrible revelations of high life somewhat in the same way being an agnostic is the best for receiving the happy revelations of Saint John this first sort of secrecy we may dismiss for its whole ultimate object is not to keep the secret but to tell it then there is the second and far more important class of things which humanity does agree to hide they are so important that they cannot possibly be discussed here but everyone will know the kind of things I mean in connection with these I wish to remark that though they are in one sense a secret they are also always a secret deep hole in shell upon sex and upon such matters we are in a human freemasonry the freemasonry is disciplined but the freemasonry is free we are asked to be silent about these things but we are not asked to be ignorant about them on the contrary the fundamental human argument is entirely the other way it is the thing most common to humanity that is most veiled by humanity it is exactly because we all know that it is there that we need not say that it is there then there is a third class of things on which the best civilization does permit privacy does resent all inquiry or explanation this is the case of things which need not be explained because they cannot be explained things too airy instinctive or intangible caprices sudden impulses and the more innocent kind of prejudice a man must not be asked why he is talkative or silent for the simple reason that he does not know a man is not asked even in Germany why he walks slow or quick simply because he could not answer a man must take his own road through a wood and make his own use of a holiday and the reason is this not because he has a strong reason but actually because he has a weak reason because he has a slight and fleeting feeling about the matter which he could not explain to a policeman which perhaps the very appearance of a policeman out of the bushes might destroy he must act on the impulse because the impulse is unimportant and he may never have the same impulse again if you like to put it so the impulse is not worth a moment's thought all these fancies men feel should be private and even Fabians have never proposed to interfere with them now for the last fortnight the newspapers have been full of very varied comments upon the problem of the secrecy of certain parts of our political finance and especially of the problem of the party funds some papers have failed entirely to understand what the quarrel is about they have urged that Irish members and Labour members are also under the shadow or as some have said even more under it the ground of this frantic statement seems when patiently considered to be simply this that Irish and Labour members receive money for what they do all persons as far as I know on this earth receive money for what they do is that some people like the Irish members do it I cannot imagine that any human being could think any other human being capable of maintaining the proposition that men ought not to receive money the simple point is that as we know that some money is given rightly and some wrongly an elementary common sense leads us to look with indifference at the money that is given in the middle of Ludgate Circus there is a particular suspicion at the money which a man will not give unless he is shut up in a box or bathing machine in short it is too silly to suppose that anybody could ever have discussed the desirability of funds the only thing that even idiots could ever have discussed is the concealment of funds therefore the whole question that we have to consider is whether the concealment of political money transactions of peerages the payment of election expenses is a kind of concealment that falls under any of the three classes I have mentioned as those in which human custom and instinct does permit us to conceal I have suggested three kinds of secrecy which are human and defensible can this institution be defended by means of any of them now the question is whether this political secrecy can be called legitimate we have roughly divided legitimate secrets into three classes first comes the secret that is only kept in order to be revealed as in the detective stories secondly the secret which is kept because everybody knows it as in sex and third the secret which is kept because it is too delicate and vague to be explained at all as in the choice of a country walk do any of these broad human divisions cover such a case as that of secrecy of the political and party finances it would be absurd and even delightfully absurd to pretend that any of them did it would be a wild and charming fancy to suggest that our politicians keep political secrets only that they may make political revelations a modern peer only pretends that he has earned his peerage in order that he may more dramatically declare with a scream of scorn and joy that he really bought it the baronet pretends that he deserved his title only in order to make more exquisite in startling the grand historical fact that he did not deserve it surely this sounds improbable surely all our statesmen cannot be saving themselves up for the excitement of a deathbed repentance the writer of detective tales makes a man a duke solely in order to blast him with a charge of bribery now the detective tale theory of the secrecy of political funds must with a sigh be given up neither can we say that the thing is explained by that second case of human secrecy which is so secret that it is hard to discuss in public a decency is preserved about certain primary human matters precisely because everybody has a secret secret and it is a secret secret that matters precisely because everyone knows all about them but the decency touching contributions purchases and peerages is not kept up because most ordinary men know what is happening it is kept up precisely because most ordinary men do not know what is happening the ordinary curtain of decorum covers normal proceedings but no one will say that being bribed is a normal proceeding and if we apply the third test to this problem of political secrecy the case is even clear and even more funny surely no one will say that the purchase of peerages and such things are kept secret because they are so light and impulsive and unimportant that they must be matters of individual fancy a child sees a flower and for the first time feels inclined to pick it but surely no one will say that a brewer is pouring at and for the first time suddenly thinks that he would like to be a peer the child's impulse need not be explained to the police for the simple reason that it could not be explained to anybody but does anyone believe that the laborious political ambitions of modern commercial men ever have this airy and incommunicable character a man lying on the beach may throw stones into the sea without any particular reason but does anyone believe that the brewer throws bags of gold into the party funds without any particular reason this theory of the secrecy of political money must also be regretfully abandoned and with it the two other possible excuses as well this secrecy is one which cannot be justified as a sensational joke nor as a common human freemasonry nor as an indescribable personal whim strangely enough indeed it violates all three conditions and classes at once it is not hidden in order to be revealed it is hidden in order to be hidden it is not kept secret because it is a common secret of mankind but because mankind must not get hold of it and it is not kept secret because it is too unimportant to be told but because it is much too important to bear telling in short the thing we have is the real and perhaps rare political phenomenon of an occult government we have an exoteric and esoteric doctrine England is really ruled by priestcraft but not by priests we have in this country all that has ever been alleged against the evil side of religion the peculiar class with privileges the sacred words that are unpronounceable the important things known only to the few in fact we lack nothing except the religion Edward VII and Scotland I have received a serious and to me at any rate an impressive remonstrance from the Scottish Patriotic Association it appears that I recently referred to Edward VII of Great Britain and Ireland King Defender of the Faith under the horrible description of the King of England the Scottish Patriotic Association gave my attention to the fact that by the provisions of the active union and the tradition of nationality the monarch should be referred to as the King of Britain the blow thus struck at me is particularly wounding because it is particularly unjust I believe in the reality of the independent nationalities under the British crown much more passionately and positively than any other educated Englishmen of my acquaintance believes in it I am quite certain that Scotland is a nation I am quite certain that nationality is the key of Scotland I am quite certain that all our success with Scotland has been due to the fact that we have in spirit treated it as a nation I am quite certain that Ireland is a nation I am quite certain that nationality is the key to Ireland I am quite certain that all our failure in Ireland arose from the fact in spirit, treated as a nation. It would be difficult to find, even among the innumerable examples that exist, a stronger example of the immensely superior importance of sentiment to what is called practicality than this case of the two sister nations. It is not that we have encouraged a Scotchman to be rich. It is not that we have encouraged a Scotchman to be active. And it is not that we have encouraged a Scotchman to be free. It is that we have quite definitely encouraged a Scotchman to be Scotch. A vague but vivid impression was received from all our writers of history, philosophy, and rhetoric, that the Scottish element was something really valuable in itself, was something which even Englishmen were forced to recognize and respect if we ever admitted the beauty of Ireland. It was a something which might be loved by an Englishman but which could hardly be respected even by an Irishman. A Scotchman might be proud of Scotland. It was enough for an Irishman that he could be fond of Ireland. Our success with the two nations has been exactly proportioned to our encouragement of their independent national emotion. The one that we would not treat nationally has alone produced nationalists. The one nation that we would not recognize as a nation in theory is the one that we have been forced to recognize as a nation in arms. The Scottish Patriotic Association has no need to draw my attention to the importance of the separate national sentiment or the need of keeping the border as the sacred line. The case is quite sufficiently proved by the positive history of Scotland. The place of Scottish loyalty to England has been taken by English admiration of Scotland. They do not need to envy us, our titular leadership, when we seem to envy them, their separation. I wish to make very clear my entire sympathy with the national sentiment of the Scottish Patriotic Association, but I wish also to make clear this very enlightening comparison between the fate of Scotch and of Irish patriotism. In life it is always the little facts that express the large emotions, and if the English once respected Ireland as they respect Scotland, it would come out in a hundred small ways. For instance there are crack regiments in the British Army which were the kilt. The kilt, which as Macaulay says with perfect truth, was regarded by nine Scotchmen out of ten as the dress of a thief. The Highland officers carry a silver-hilted version of the old barbarous Gaelic broadsword with a basket hilt, which split the skulls of so many English soldiers as Gaelic cranky and Preston pans. When you have a regiment of men in the British Army carrying ornamental silver chelalies, you will have done the same thing for Ireland and not before, or when you mention Brian Baroo with the same intonation as Bruce. Let me be considered, therefore, to have made quite clear that I believe with a quite special intensity in the independent consideration of Scotland and Ireland as a part from England. I believe that in the proper sense of the words Scotland is an independent nation even if Edward VII is the King of Scotland. I believe that in the proper sense of the words Ireland is an independent nation even if Edward VII is King of Ireland. But the fact is that I have an even bolder and wilder belief than either of these. I believe that England is an independent nation. I believe that England also has its independent colour and history and meaning. I believe that England could produce costumes quite as queer as the Kilt. I believe that England has heroes fully as untranslatable as Brian Baroo, and consequently I believe that Edward VII is, among his innumerable other functions, really King of England. If my Scotch friends insist, let us call up one of his quite obscure unpopular and minor titles, one of his Relaxations. A little while ago he was Duke of Cornwall, but for a family accident he might still have been King of Hanover. Nor do I think that we should blame the simple Cornishman if they spoke of him in a rhetorical moment by his Cornish title, nor the well-meaning Henevarians if they clasped him with the Henevarian princes. Now it so happens that in the passage complained of, I said the King of England merely because I meant the King of England. I was speaking strictly and especially of English kings, of kings in the tradition of the old kings of England. I wrote as an English nationalist, keenly conscious of the sacred boundary of the tweed that keeps or used to keep our ancient enemies at bay. I wrote as an English nationalist, resolved for one wild moment to throw off the tyranny of the Scotch and Irish, who governed and oppressed my country. I felt that England was at least spiritually guarded against those surrounding nationalities. I dreamed that the tweed was guarded by the ghosts of scropes and purses. I dreamed that St. George's Channel was guarded by St. George and, in this insular security, I spoke deliberately and specifically of the King of England, of the representative of the Tudors and Plantagenets. It is true that the two kings of England of whom I especially spoke Charles II and George III had both an alien origin, not very recent and not very remote. Charles II came of a family originally Scotch. George III came of a family originally German. But the same, so far as echoes, could be said of the English royal houses when England stood quite alone. The Plantagenets were originally a French family. The Tudors were originally a Welsh family. But I was not talking of the amount of English sentiment in the English kings. I was talking of the amount of English sentiment in the English treatment and popularity of the English kings. With that, Ireland and Scotland have nothing whatever to do. Charles II may, for all I know, have not only been King of Scotland, he may by virtue of his temper and ancestry have been a Scotch King of Scotland. There was something Scotch about his combination of clear headedness with sensuality. There was something Scotch about his combination of doing what he liked, with knowing what he was doing. But I was not talking of the personality of Charles, which may have been Scotch. I was talking of the popularity of Charles, which was certainly English. One thing is quite certain, whether or no he ever ceased to be a Scotch man, he ceased as soon as he conveniently could to be a Scotch king. He had actually tried the experiment of being a national ruler north of the Tweed, and his people liked him as little as he liked them. A Presbyterianism of the Scottish religion, he left on record the exquisitely English judgment that it was no religion for a gentleman. His popularity then was purely English, his royalty was purely English, and I was using the words with the utmost narrowness and deliberation when I spoke of this particular popularity and royalty as the popularity and royalty of a king of England. I said of the English people especially that they liked to pick up the king's crown when he has dropped it. I do not feel at all sure that this does apply to the Scotch or the Irish. I think that the Irish would knock his crown off for him. I think that the Scotch would keep it for him after they had picked it up. For my part I should be inclined to adopt quite the opposite method of asserting nationality. Why should good Scottish nationalists call Edward the Seventh the King of Britain? They ought to call him King Edward the First of Scotland. What is Britain? Where is Britain? There's no such place. There never was a nation of Britain, and there never was a king of Britain unless, perhaps, Vordegern, Euther Pendragon had a taste for the title. If we are to develop our monarchy, I should be all together in favor of developing it along the line of local patriotism and of local proprietorship in the king. I think that the Londoners ought to call him the King of London, and the Liverpoolians ought to call him the King of Liverpool. I do not go so far as to say that the people of Birmingham ought to call Edward the Seventh the King of Birmingham, for that would be high treason to a holier and more established power. But I think we might read in the papers the King of Brighton left Brighton at half-past two this afternoon, and then immediately afterwards the King of Worthing entered Worthing at ten minutes past three. Were the people of Margate bade a reluctant farewell to the popular King of Margate this morning, and then his majesty the King of Ramsgate returned to his country and capital this afternoon after his long sojourn in strange lands? It might be pointed out that, by a curious coincidence, the departure of the King of Oxford occurred a very short time before the triumphal arrival of the King of Reading. I cannot imagine any method which would more increase the kindly and normal relations between the sovereign and his people. Nor do I think that such a method would be, in any sense, the deprecation of the royal dignity, for as a matter of fact it would put the King upon the same platform with the gods. The saints, the most exalted of human figures, were also the most local. It was exactly the men whom we most easily connected with heaven, whom we also most easily connected with earth. Things Considered by G. K. Chesterton Section 6 Thoughts Around Copanic A famous and epigrammatic author said that life copied literature. It seems clear that life really caricatures it. I suggested recently that the Germans submitted to and even admired a solemn and theatrical assertion of authority. In a few hours after I had set up my copy I saw the first announcement of the affair of the comic Captain at Copanic. The most absurd part of this absurd fraud, at least English eyes, is one which, oddly enough, has received comparatively little comment. I mean the point at which the mayor asked for a warrant, and the captain pointed to the bayonets of his soldiery and said, These are my authority. One would have thought that any one would have known that no soldier would talk like that. The dupes were blamed for not knowing that the man wore the wrong cap or the wrong sash or had his sword buckled on the wrong way, but these are technicalities which they might surely be excused for not knowing. I certainly should not know if a soldier's sash were on inside out or his cap on behind before. But I should know, uncommonly well, that genuine professional soldiers do not talk like Adelphi villains and utter theatrical epigrams in praise of abstract violence. We can see this more clearly, perhaps, if we suppose it to be the case of any other dignified and clearly distinguishable profession. Suppose a bishop called upon me. My great modesty and my rather distant reverence for the higher clergy might lead me certainly to a strong suspicion that any bishop who called upon me was bogus bishop. But if I wished to test his genuineness I should not dream of attempting to do so by examining the shape of his apron or the way his gaiters were done up. I have not the remotest idea of the way his gaiters ought to be done up. A very vague approximation to an apron would probably take me in, and if he behaved like an approximately Christian gentleman he would be safe enough for my detection. But suppose the bishop, the moment he entered the room, fell on his knees on the mat, clasped his hands, and poured out a flood of passionate and somewhat hysterical extempore prayer. I should say at once and without the smallest hesitation whatever else this man is he is not an elderly and wealthy cleric of the Church of England. They don't do such things. Or suppose a man came to me pretending to be a qualified doctor and flourished a stethoscope or what he said was a stethoscope. I am glad to say that I have not even the remotest notion of what a stethoscope looks like, so that if he flourished a musical box or a coffee mill it would be all one to me. But I do think that I am not exaggerating my own sugacity if I say that I should begin to suspect the doctor if on entering my room he flung his legs and arms about crying wildly, health, health, priceless gift of nature, I possess it, I overflow with it, I yearn to impart it, all the sacred rapture of imparting health. In that case I should suspect him of being rather in a position to receive than to offer medical superintendents. Now it is no exaggeration at all to say that anyone who has ever known any soldiers, I can only answer for English and Irish and Scotch soldiers, would find it just as easy to believe that a real bishop would grovel on the carpet in a religious ecstasy, or that a real doctor would dance about on the drawing room to show the invigorating effects of his own medicine, as to believe that a soldier, when asked for his authority, would point to a lot of shining weapons and declare symbolically that might was right. Of course a real soldier would go rather red in the face and huskily repeat the proper formula, whatever it was, as that he came in the king's name. Soldiers have many faults, but they have one redeeming merit, they are never worshippers of force. Soldiers more than any other man are taught severely and systematically that might is not right. The fact is obvious, the might is in the hundred men who obey. The right, or what is held to be right, is in the one man who commands them. They learn to obey symbols, arbitrary things, stripes on an arm, buttons on a coat, a title, a flag. These may be artificial things, they may be unreasonable things, they may, if you will, be wicked things, but they are weak things, they are not force, and they do not look like force. They are parts of an idea, of the idea of discipline, if you will, of the idea of tyranny, but still an idea. No soldier could possibly say that his own bayonets were his authority. No soldier could possibly say that he came in the name of his own bayonets. It would be as absurd as if a postman said that he came inside his bag. I do not, as I have said, underrate the evils that really do arise from militarism and the military ethic. It tends to give people wooden faces and sometimes wooden heads. It tends, moreover, both through its specialization and through its constant obedience, to a certain loss of real independence and strength of character. This has almost always been found when people made the mistake of turning the soldier into a statesman, under the mistaken impression that he was a strong man. The Duke of Wellington, for instance, was a strong soldier and, therefore, a weak statesman. But the soldier is always, by the nature of things, loyal to something. And as long as one is loyal to something, one can never be a worshipper of mere force, for mere force, violence in the abstract, is the enemy of anything we love. To love anything is to see it at once under lowering skies of danger. Loyalty implies loyalty in misfortune, and when a soldier has accepted any nation's uniform, he has already accepted its defeat. Nevertheless, it does appear to be possible, in Germany, for a man to point to fixed bayonets and say, these are my authority, and yet to convince ordinarily sane men that he is a soldier. If this is so, it does really seem to point to some habit of high-faulting in the German nation, such as that of which I spoke previously. It almost looks as if the advisors and even the officials of the German army had become infected in some degree with the false and feeble doctrine that might is right. As this doctrine is invariably preached by physical weaklings like Niche, it is a very serious thing, even to entertain the supposition, that it is affecting men who have really to do military work. It would be the end of German soldiers to be affected by German philosophy. Energetic people use energy as a means, but only very tired people ever use energy as a reason. Athletes go in for games because athletes desire glory. Invalids go in for calisthenics, for invalids, alone of all human beings, desire strength. So long as the German army points to its heraldic eagles and says, I come in the name of this fierce but fabulous animal, the German army will be all right. If ever it says I come in the name of bayonets, the bayonets will break like glass, for only the weak exhibit strength without an aim. At the same time, as I said before, do not let us forge our own faults. Do not let us forget them any more easily, because they are opposite to the German faults. Modern England is too prone to present the spectacle of a person who is enormously delighted because he has not got the contrary disadvantages of his own. The Englishman is always saying my house is not damp at the moment when his house is on fire. The Englishman is always saying I have thrown off all traces of anemia in the middle of a fit of apoplexy. Let us always remember that if an Englishman wants to swindle English people, he does not dress up in the uniform of a soldier. If an Englishman wants to swindle English people, he would assume think of dressing up in the uniform of a messenger boy. Everything in England is done unofficially, casually, by conversations and clicks. The one parliament that really does rule England is a secret parliament, the debates of which must not be published, the cabinet. The debates of the commons are sometimes important, but only the debates in the lobby, never the debates in the house. Journalists do control public opinion, but it is not controlled by the arguments they publish. It is controlled by the arguments between the editor and the sub-editor, which they do not publish. This casualness is our English vise. It is, it wants casual and secret. Our public life is conducted privately, hence it follows that if an English swindler wished to impress us, the last thing he would think of doing would be to put on a uniform. He would put on a polite, slouching air and a careless expensive suit of clothes. He would stroll up to the mayor, be so awfully sorry to disturb him, find that he had forgotten his card case, mentioned as if he were ashamed of it that he was the Duke of Marcia, and carry the whole thing through, with the air of a man who could get two hundred witnesses and two thousand retainers, but who was too tired to call any of them. And if he did it very well, I strongly suspect that he would be as successful as the indefensible captain at Copenac. Our tendency for many centuries past has been not so much towards creating an aristocracy, which may or may not be a good thing in itself, as towards substituting an aristocracy for everything else. In England we have an aristocracy instead of a religion. The nobility are to the English poor what the saints and the fairies are to the Irish poor, what the large devil with the blackface was to the Scotch poor, the poetry of life. In the same way in England we have an aristocracy instead of a government. We rely on a certain good humor and education in the upper classes to interpret to us our contradictory constitution. No educated man born of woman will be quite so absurd as the system that he has to administer. In short, we do not get good laws to restrain bad people. We get good people to restrain bad laws. And last of all, we in England have an aristocracy instead of an army. We have an army of which the officers are proud of their families and ashamed of their uniforms. If I were a king of any country, whatever, and one of my officers were ashamed of my uniform, I should be ashamed of my officer. Beware then of the really well-bred and apologetic gentleman whose clothes are at once quiet and fashionable, whose manner is at once diffident and frank. Beware how you admit him into your domestic secrets, for he may be a bogus earl, or worse still, a real one. The boy. I have no sympathy with international aggression when it is taken seriously, but I have a certain dark and wild sympathy with it when it is quite absurd. Raids are all wrong as practical politics, but they are human and imaginable as practical jokes. In fact, almost any act of ragging or violence can be forgiven on this strict condition, that it is of no use at all to anybody. If the aggressor gets anything out of it, then it is quite unpardonable. It is damned by the least hint of utility or profit. A man of spirit and breeding may brawl, but he does not steal. A gentleman knocks off his friend's hat, but he does not annex his friend's hat. For this reason, as Mr. Bellic has pointed out somewhere, the very militant French people have always returned after their immense raids, the raids of Godfrey, the Crusader, the raids of Napoleon. They are sucked back, having accomplished nothing but an epic. Sometimes I see small fragments of information in the newspapers, which make my heart leap with an irrational patriotic sympathy. I have had the misfortune to be left comparatively cold by many of the enterprises and proclamations of my country in recent times. The other day I found in the Tribune the following paragraph, which I may be permitted to set down as an example of the kind of international outrage with which I have by far the most instinctive sympathy. There is something attractive, too, in the austere simplicity with which the affair is set forth. Geneva, October 31. The English schoolboy Allen, who was arrested at Lusaine Railway Station on Saturday, for having painted red the statue of General Jomney of Perne, was liberated yesterday after paying a fine of twenty-four pounds. Allen has proceeded to Germany where he will continue his studies. The people of Perne are indignant and clamored for his detention in prison. Now I have no doubt that ethics and social necessity require a contrary attitude. But I will freely confess that my first emotions on reading of this exploit were those of profound and elemental pleasure. There is something so large and simple about the operation of painting a whole stone general a bright red. Of course I can understand that the people of Perne were indignant. They had passed to their homes at twilight through the streets of that beautiful city, or is it a province? And they had seen against the silver ending of the sunset the grand gray figure of the hero of that land remaining to guard the town under the stars. This certainly must have been a shock to come out in the broad white morning and find a large and familiar general staring under the staring sun. I do not blame them at all for clamoring for the schoolboy's detention in prison. I dare say a little detention in prison would do him no harm. Still I think the immense act has something about it human and excusable, and when I endeavour to analyze the reason of this feeling I find it to lie, not in the fact that the thing was big or bold or successful, but in the fact that the thing was perfectly useless to everybody, including the person who did it. The raid ends in itself, and so Master Allen is sucked back again having accomplished nothing but an epic. There is one thing which, in the presence of average modern journalism, is perhaps worth saying in connection with such an idle matter as this. The morals of a matter like this are exactly like the morals of anything else. They are concerned with mutual contract or with the rights of independent human lives, but the whole modern world, or at any rate the whole modern press, has a perpetual and consuming terror of plain morals. Men always attempt to avoid condemning a thing upon merely moral grounds. If I beat my grandmother to death tomorrow in the middle of Battersea Park you may be perfectly certain that people will say everything about it except the simple and fairly obvious fact that it is wrong. Some will call it insane. That is, we will accuse it of a deficiency of intelligence. This is not necessarily true at all. You could not tell whether the act was unintelligent or not, unless you knew my grandmother. Some will call it vulgar, disgusting, and the rest of it. That is, they will accuse it of a lack of manners. It does show a lack of manners, but this is scarcely its most serious disadvantage. Others will talk about the loathsome spectacle and the revolting scene. That is, they will accuse it of a deficiency of art or aesthetic beauty. This again depends on the circumstances in order to be quite certain that the appearance of the old lady has definitely deteriorated under the process of being beaten to death. It is necessary for the philosophic critic to be quite certain how ugly she was before. Another school of thinkers will say that the action is lacking in efficiency, that it is an uneconomic waste of a good grandmother. But that could only depend on the value, which is, again, an individual manner. The only real point that is worth mentioning is that the action is wicked, because your grandmother has a right not to be beaten to death. But of this simple moral explanation, modern journalism has, as I say, a standing fear. It will call the action anything else, mad, bestial, vulgar, idiotic, rather than call it sinful. One example can be found in such cases as that of the prank of the boy and the statue. When some trick of this sort is played, the newspapers, opposed to it, always describe it as a senseless joke. What is the good of saying that? Every joke is a senseless joke. A joke is, by its nature, a protest against sense. It is no good attacking nonsense for being successfully nonsensical. Of course it is nonsensical to paint a celebrated Italian general a bright red. It is as nonsensical as Alice in Wonderland. It is also, in my opinion, very nearly as funny. But the real answer to the affair is not to say that it is nonsensical or even to say that it is not funny, but to point out that it is wrong to spoil statues which belong to other people. If the modern world will not insist on having some sharp and definite moral law capable of resisting the counter attractions of art and humor, the modern world will simply be given over as a spoil to anybody who can manage to do a nasty thing in a nice way. Every murderer who can murder entertainingly will be allowed to murder. Every burglar who burglars in really humorous attitudes will burgle as much as he likes. There is another case of the thing that I mean. Why on earth do the newspapers, in describing a dynamite outrage or any other political assassination, call it a dastardly outrage or a cowardly outrage? It is perfectly evident that it is not dastardly in the least. It is perfectly evident that it is about as cowardly as the Christians going to the lions. The man who does it exposes himself to the chance of being torn in pieces by two thousand people. What the thing is, is not cowardly, but profoundly and detestably wicked. The man who does it is very infamous and very brave, but again the explanation is that our modern press would rather appeal to physical arrogance or to anything, rather than appeal to right and wrong. In most of the matters of modern England the real difficulty is that there is a negative revolution without a positive revolution. Positive aristocracy is breaking up without any particular appearance of positive democracy taking its place. The polished class is becoming less polished without becoming less of a class. The nobleman who becomes a guinea pig keeps all his privileges but loses some of his tradition. He becomes less of a gentleman without becoming less of a nobleman. In the same way until some recent and happy revivals it seemed highly probable that the Church of England would cease to be a religion long before it had ceased to be a church. And in the same way the vulgarization of this old simple middle class does not even have the advantage of doing away with class distinctions. The vulgar man is always the most distinguished for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar. At the same time it must be remembered that when a class has a morality it does not follow that it is an adequate morality. The middle class ethic was inadequate for some purposes. So is the public school ethic. The ethic of the upper classes. On this last matter of the public schools Dr. Spencer, the headmaster of University College School, has lately made some valuable observations. But even he, I think, overstates the claim of the public schools. The strong point of the English public schools, he says, has always lain in their efficiency as agencies for the formation of character and for the inculcation of the great notion of obligation which distinguishes a gentleman. On the physical and moral sides the public schoolmen of England are, I believe, unequaled. And he goes on to say that it is on the mental side that they are defective. But as a matter of fact, the public school training is in the strict sense defective upon the moral side also. It leaves out about half a morality. Its just claim is that, like the old middle class and the Zulus, it trains some virtues and therefore suits some people for some situations. Put an old English merchant to serve in an army and he would have been irritated and clumsy. Put the men from English public schools to rule Ireland and they make the greatest hash in human history. Touching the morality of the public schools, I will take one point only, which is enough to prove the case. People have got into their heads an extraordinary idea that English public schoolboys and English youth generally are taught to tell the truth. They are taught absolutely nothing of the kind. At no English public school is it even suggested, except by accident, that it is a man's duty to tell the truth. What is suggested is something entirely different, that it is a man's duty not to tell lies. So completely does this mistake soak through all civilization that we hardly ever think even of the difference between the two things. When we say to a child, you must tell the truth, we do merely mean that he must refrain from verbal inaccuracies. But the thing we never teach at all is the general duty of telling the truth, of giving a complete and fair picture of anything we are talking about, of not misrepresenting, not evading, not suppressing, not using plausible arguments that we know to be unfair, not selecting unscrupulously to prove an ex parte case, not telling all the nice stories about the Scotch and all the nasty stories about the Irish, not pretending to be disinterested when you are really angry, not pretending to be angry when you are really only avaricious. The one thing that is never taught by any chance in the atmosphere of public schools is exactly that, that there is a whole truth of things, and that in knowing it and speaking it we are happy. If anyone has the smallest doubt of this neglect of truth in public schools, he can kill his doubt with one plain question. Can anyone on earth believe that if the seeing and telling of the whole truth were really one of the ideals of the English governing class, there could conceivably exist such a thing as the English Party System? Why the English Party System is founded upon the principle that telling the whole truth does not matter? It is founded upon the principle that half a truth is better than no politics. Our system deliberately turns the crowd of men who might be impartial into irrational partisans. It teaches some of them to tell lies and all of them to believe lies. It gives every man an arbitrary brief that he has to work up as best he may and defend as best he can. It turns a roomful of citizens into a roomful of barristers. I know that it has many charms and virtues, fighting and good fellowship. It has all the charms and virtues of a game. I only say that it would be a stark impossibility in a nation which believed in telling the truth. Limericks and Councils of Perfection. It is customary to remark that modern problems cannot easily be attacked because they are so complex. In many cases I believe it is really because they are so simple. Nobody would believe in such simplicity of scoundrelism, even if it were pointed out. People would say that the truth was a charge of mere melodramatic villainy, forgetting that nearly all villains really are melodramatic. Thus for instance we say that some good measures are frustrated or some bad officials kept in power by the press and confusion of public business, whereas very often the reason is simply healthy human bribery. And thus especially we say that the yellow press is exaggerative, over-emotional, illiterate, and anarchial, and a hundred other long words, whereas the only objection to it is that it tells lies. We waste our fine intellects in finding exquisite phraseology to fit a man, when in a well-ordered society we ought to be finding handcuffs to fit him. This criticism of the modern type of righteous indignation must have come into many people's minds. I think in reading Dr. Horton's eloquent impressions of disgust at the corrupt press, especially in connection with the limerick craze. Upon the limerick craze itself I fear Dr. Horton will not have much effect. Such fads perish before one has had time to kill them. But Dr. Horton's protest may really do good if it enables us to come to some clear understanding about what is really wrong with the popular press, and which means it might be useful and which permissible to use for its reform. We do not want a censorship of the press, but we are long past talking about that. At present it is not what we call the silence of the press. It is the press that silences us. It is not a case of the Commonwealth settling how much the editor shall say. It is the case of the editors settling how much the Commonwealth shall know. If we attack the press we shall be rebelling, not repressing. But shall we attack it? Now it is just here that the chief difficulty occurs. It arises from the very rarity and rectitude of those minds which commonly inaugurate such crusades. I have the warmest respect for Dr. Horton's thirst after righteousness, but it is always seemed to me that his righteousness would be more effective without his refinement. The curse of the nonconformists is their universal refinement. They dimly connect being good with being delicate and even dapper with not being grotesque, or loud or violent, with not sitting down on one's hat. Now it is always a pleasure to be loud and violent, and sometimes it is a duty. Certainly it has nothing to do with sin. A man can be loudly and violently virtuous, nay he can be loudly and violently saintly, though that is not the type of saintliness that we recognize in Dr. Horton. And as for sitting on one's hat, if it is done for any sublime object as for instance to amuse the children, it is obviously an act of very beautiful self-sacrifice, the destruction and surrender of the symbol of personal dignity upon the shrine of public festivity. Now we will not do to attack the modern editor, merely for being unrefined like the great mass of mankind. We must be able to say that he is immoral, not that he is undignified or ridiculous. I do not mind the yellow-press editor sitting on his hat. My only objection to him begins to dawn when he attempts to sit on my hat, or indeed, as is as present the case when he proceeds to sit on my head. But in reading between the lines of Dr. Horton's invective, one continually feels that he is not only angry with the popular press for being unscrupulous, he is partly angry with the popular press for being popular. He is not only irritated with the limericks for causing a mean money-scramble, he is also partly irritated with the limericks for being limericks. The enormous size of the levity gets on his nerves, like the glare and blare of a bank holiday. Now this is a motive which, however human and natural, must be strictly kept out of the way. It takes all sorts to make a world, and it is not in the least necessary that everybody should have that love of subtle and unobtrusive perfections in the matter of manners or literature which does often go with the type of the ethical idealist. It is not in the least desirable that everybody should be earnest. It is highly desirable that everybody should be honest. But that is a thing that can go quite easily with a coarse and cheerful character, but largely due to the instinct of democracy and the instinct of democracy is like the instinct of one woman, wild but quite right, that the people who were trying to purify the press were also trying to refine it, and to this the democracy very naturally and very justly objected. We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind, but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners. We have no right to purge the popular press of all that we think vulgar or trivial. Dr. Horton may possibly loathe and detest limericks just as I loathe and detest riddles, but I have no right to call them flippant and unprofitable. There are wild people in the world who like riddles. I am so afraid of this movement passing off into mere formless rhetoric and platform passion that I will even come close to the earth and lay down specifically some of the things that in my opinion could be and ought to be done to reform the press. First, I would make a law, if there is none such at present, by which an editor proved to have published false news without reasonable verification should simply go to prison. This is not a question of influences or atmospheres. The thing could be carried out as easily and as practically as the punishment of thieves and murderers. Of course there would be the usual statement that the guilt was that of a subordinate. Let the accused editor have the right of proving this if he can. If he does, let the subordinate be tried and go to prison. Two or three good rich editors and proprietors properly locked up would take the sting out of the yellow press better than centuries of Dr. Horton. Second, it's impossible to pass over altogether the most unpleasant but the most important part of this problem. I will deal with it as distantly as possible. I do not believe there is any harm whatever in reading about murders, rather if anything good for the thought of death operates very powerful with the poor in the creation of brotherhood and a sense of human dignity. I do not believe there is a penny worth of harm in the police news as such. Even divorce news, though contemptible enough, can really in most cases be left to the discretion of grown people, and how far children get hold of such things is a problem for the home and not for the nation. But there is a certain class of evils which a healthy man or woman can actually go through life without knowing anything about at all. These I say should be stamped and blackened out of every newspaper with the thickest black of the Russian censor. Such cases should either be always tried in camera or reporting them should be a punishable offense. The common weaknesses of nature and the sins that flesh is heir to, we can leave people to find in newspapers. Men can safely see in the papers what they have already seen in the streets. They may safely find in their journals what they have already found in themselves. But we do not want the imaginations of rational and decent people clouded with the horrors of some obscene insanity which has no more to do with human life than the man in bedlam who thinks he is a chicken. And if this vile matter is admitted, let it be simply with a mention of the Latin or legal name of the crime and with no details, whatever. As it is exactly the reverse is true. Papers are permitted to terrify and darken the fancy of the young with innumerable details, but not permitted to state in clean legal language what the thing is about. They are allowed to give any fact about the thing except the fact that it is a sin. Third, I would do my best to introduce everywhere the practice of signed articles. People who urge the advantages of anonymity are either people who do not realize the special peril of our time or they are people who are profiting by it. It is true, but futile, for an instance, to say that there is something noble in being nameless when a whole corporate body is bent on a consistent aim, as in an army or men building a cathedral. The point of modern newspapers is that there is no such corporate body and common aim, but each man can use the authority of the paper to further his own private fads and his own private finances.