Part 5

In 1910, walking in Hyde Park with a writer friend, I remember saying: “It’s the hereditary autocracies in Germany, Austria, and Russia which make the danger of war.” He did not agree――but no two writers agree with each other at any given moment. “If only autocracies go down in the wreckage of this war!” was almost the first thought I put down in writing when the war broke out. Well, they are gone! They were an anachronism, and without them and the bureaucracies and secrecy which buttressed them we should not, I think, have had this world catastrophe. But let us not too glibly assume that the forms of government which take their place can steer the battered ships of the nations in the very troubled waters of to-day, or that they will be truly democratic. Even highly democratic statesmen have been known to resort to the way of the headmaster at my old school, who put a motion to the masters’ meeting and asked for a show of hands in its favour. Not one hand was held up. “Then,” he said, “I shall adopt it with the greater regret.” Nevertheless, the essential new factor is, that, whereas in 1914 civilisation was on two planes, it is now, theoretically, at least, on the one democratic plane or level. That is a great easing of the world-situation, and removes a chief cause of international misunderstanding. The rest depends on what we can now make of democracy. Surely no word can so easily be taken in vain; to have got rid of the hereditary principle in government is by no means to have made democracy a real thing. Democracy is neither government by rabble, nor government by caucus. Its measure as a beneficent principle is the measure of the intelligence, honesty, public spirit, and independence of the average voter. The voter who goes to the poll blind of an eye and with a cast in the other, so that he sees no issue clear, and every issue only in so far as it affects him personally, is not precisely the sort of ultimate administrative power we want. Intelligent, honest, public-spirited, and independent voters guarantee an honest and intelligent governing body. The best men the best government is a truism which cannot be refuted. Democracy to be real and effective must succeed in throwing up into the positions of administrative power the most trustworthy of its able citizens. In other words it must incorporate and make use of the principle of aristocracy; government by the best――_best in spirit_, not best-born. Rightly seen, there is no tug between democracy and aristocracy; aristocracy should be the means and machinery by which democracy works itself out. What then can be done to increase in the average voter intelligence and honesty, public spirit and independence? Nothing save by education. The Arts, the Schools, the Press. It is impossible to overestimate the need for vigour, breadth, restraint, good taste, enlightenment, and honesty in these three agencies. The artist, the teacher (and among teachers one includes, of course, religious teachers in so far as they concern themselves with the affairs of this world), and the journalist have the future in their hands. As they are fine the future will be fine; as they are mean the future will be mean. The burden is very specially on the shoulders of Public Men, and that most powerful agency the Press, which reports them. Do we realise the extent to which the modern world relies for its opinions on public utterances and the Press? Do we realise how completely we are all in the power of report? Any little lie or exaggerated sentiment uttered by one with a bee in his bonnet, with a principle, or an end to serve, can, if cleverly expressed and distributed, distort the views of thousands, sometimes of millions. Any wilful suppression of truth for Party or personal ends can so falsify our vision of things as to plunge us into endless cruelties and follies. Honesty of thought and speech and written word is a jewel, and they who curb prejudice and seek honourably to know and speak the truth are the only true builders of a better life. But what a dull world if we can’t chatter and write irresponsibly, can’t slop over with hatred, or pursue our own ends without scruple! To be tied to the apron-strings of truth, or coiffed with the nightcap of silence; who in this age of cheap ink and oratory will submit to such a fate? And yet, if we do not want another seven million violent deaths, another eight million maimed and halt and blind, and if we do not want anarchy, our tongues must be sober, and we must tell the truth. Report, I would almost say, now rules the world and holds the fate of man on the sayings of its many tongues. If the good sense of mankind cannot somehow restrain utterance and cleanse report, Democracy, so highly vaunted, will not save us; and all the glib words of promise spoken might as well have lain unuttered in the throats of orators. We are always in peril under Democracy of taking the line of least resistance and immediate material profit. The gentleman, for instance, whoever he was, who first discovered that he could sell his papers better by undercutting the standard of his rivals, and, appealing to the lower tastes of the Public under the flag of that convenient expression “what the Public wants,” made a most evil discovery. The Press is for the most part in the hands of men who know what is good and right. It can be a great agency for levelling up. But whether on the whole it is so or not, one continually hears doubted. There ought to be no room for doubt in any of our minds that the Press is on the side of the angels. It can do as much as any other single agency to raise the level of honesty, intelligence, public spirit, and taste in the average voter, in other words, to build Democracy on a sure foundation. This is a truly tremendous trust; for the safety of civilisation and the happiness of mankind hangs thereby. The saying about little children and the kingdom of heaven was meant for the ears of all those who have it in their power to influence simple folk. To be a good and honest editor, a good and honest journalist is in these days to be a veritable benefactor of mankind.

Now take the function of the artist, of the man who in stone, or music, marble, bronze, paint, or words, can express himself, and his vision of life, truly and beautifully. Can we set limit to his value? The answer is in the affirmative. We set such limitation to his value that he has been known to die of it. And I would only venture to say here that if we don’t increase the store we set by him, we shall, in this reach-me-down age of machines and wholesale standardisations, emulate the Goths who did their best to destroy the art of Rome, and all these centuries later, by way of atonement, have filled the Thiergarten at Berlin and the City of London with peculiar brands of statuary, and are always writing their names on the Sphynx.

I suppose the hardest lesson we all have to learn in life is that we can’t have things both ways. If we want to have beauty, that which appeals not merely to the stomach and the epidermis (which is the function of the greater part of industrialism), but to what lies deeper within the human organism, the heart and the brain, we must have conditions which permit and even foster the production of beauty. The artist, unfortunately, no less than the rest of mankind, must eat to live. Now, if we insist that we will pay the artist only for what fascinates the popular uneducated instincts, he will either produce beauty, remain unpaid and starve; or he will give us shoddy, and fare sumptuously every day. My experience tells me this: An artist who is by accident of independent means can, if he has talent, give the Public what he, the artist, wants, and sooner or later the public will take whatever he gives it, at his own valuation. But very few artists, _who have no independent means_, have enough character to hold out until they can sit on the Public’s head and pull the Public’s beard, to use the old Sikh saying. How many times have I not heard over here――and it’s very much the same over there――that a man must produce this or that kind of work or else of course he can’t live. My advice――at all events to young artists and writers――is: ‘Sooner than do that and have someone sitting on _your_ head and pulling your beard all the time, go out of business――there are other means of making a living, besides faked or degraded art. Become a dentist and revenge yourself on the Public’s teeth――even editors and picture dealers go to the dentist!’ The artist has got to make a stand against being exploited, and he has got, also, to live the kind of life which will give him a chance to see clearly, to feel truly, and to express beautifully. He, too, is a trustee for the future of mankind. Money has one inestimable value――it guarantees independence, the power of going your own way and giving out the best that’s in you. But, generally speaking, we don’t stop there in our desire for money; and I would say that any artist who doesn’t stop there is not ‘playing the game,’ neither towards himself nor towards mankind; he is not standing up for the faith that is in him, and the future of civilisation.

And now what of the teacher? One of the discouraging truths of life is the fact that a man cannot raise himself from the ground by the hair of his own head. And if one took Democracy logically, one would have to give up the idea of improvement. But things are not always what they seem, as somebody once said; and fortunately, government ‘of the people by the people for the people’ does not in practice prevent the people from using those saving graces――Commonsense and Selection. In fact, only by the use of those graces will democracy work at all. When twelve men get together to serve on a jury, their commonsense makes them select the least stupid among them to be their foreman. Each of them, of course, feels that he is that least stupid man, but since a man cannot vote for himself, he votes for the least dense among his neighbours, and the foreman comes to life. The same principle applied thoroughly enough throughout the social system produces government by the best. And it is more vital to apply it _thoroughly_ in matters of education than in other branches of human activity. But when we have secured our best heads of education, we must trust them and give them real power, for they are the hope――well nigh the only hope――of our future. They alone, by the selection and instruction of their subordinates and the curricula which they lay down, can do anything substantial in the way of raising the standard of general taste, conduct, and learning. They alone can give the starting push towards greater dignity and simplicity; promote the love of proportion, and the feeling for beauty. They alone can gradually instil into the body politic the understanding that education is not a means towards wealth as such, or learning as such, but towards the broader ends of health and happiness. The first necessity for improvement in modern life is that our teachers should have the wide view, and be provided with the means and the curricula which make it possible to apply this enlightenment to their pupils. Can we take too much trouble to secure the best men as heads of education――that most responsible of all positions in the modern State? The child is father to the man. We think too much of politics and too little of education. We treat it almost as cavalierly as the undergraduate treated the Master of Balliol. “Yes,” he said, showing his people round the quadrangle, “that’s the Master’s window;” then, picking up a pebble, he threw it against the window pane. “And that,” he said, as a face appeared, “is the Master!” Democracy has come, and on education Democracy hangs; the thread as yet is slender.

It is a far cry to the third new factor: Exploitation of the air. We were warned, by Sir Hiram Maxim about 1910 that a year or so of war would do more for the conquest of the air than many years of peace. It has. We hear of a man flying 260 miles in 90 minutes; of the Atlantic being flown in 24 hours; of airships which will have a lifting capacity of 300 tons; of air mail-routes all over the world. The time will perhaps come when we shall live in the air, and come down to earth on Sundays.

I confess that, mechanically marvellous as all this is, it interests me chiefly as a prime instance of the way human beings prefer the shadow of existence to its substance. Granted that we speed up everything, that we annihilate space, that we increase the powers of trade, leave no point of the earth unsurveyed, and are able to perform air-stunts which people will pay five dollars apiece to see――how shall we have furthered human health, happiness, and virtue, speaking in the big sense of these words? It is an advantage, of course, to be able to carry food to a starving community in some desert; to rescue shipwrecked mariners; to have a letter from one’s wife four days sooner than one could otherwise; and generally to save time in the swopping of our commodities and the journeys we make. But how does all this help human beings to inner contentment of spirit, and health of body? Did the arrival of motor-cars, bicycles, telephones, trains, and steamships do much for them in that line? Anything which serves to stretch human capabilities to the utmost, would help human happiness, if each new mechanical activity, each new human toy as it were, did not so run away with our sense of proportion as to debauch our energies. A man, for instance, takes to motoring, who used to ride or walk; it becomes a passion with him, so that he now never rides or walks――and his calves become flabby and his liver enlarged. A man puts a telephone into his house to save time and trouble, and is straightway a slave to the tinkle of its bell. The few human activities in themselves and of themselves pure good are just eating, drinking, sleeping, and the affections――in moderation; the inhaling of pure air, exercise in most of its forms, and interesting creative work――in moderation; the study and contemplation of the arts and Nature――in moderation; thinking of others and not thinking of yourself――in moderation; doing kind acts and thinking kind thoughts. All the rest seems to be what the prophet had in mind when he said: ‘Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!’ Ah! but the one great activity――adventure and the craving for sensation! It is that for which the human being really lives, and all his restless activity is caused by the desire for it. True; yet adventure and sensation without rhyme or reason lead to disharmony and disproportion. We may take civilisation to the South Sea Islands, but it would be better to leave the islanders naked and healthy than to improve them with trousers and civilisation off the face of the earth. We may invent new cocktails, but it would be better to stay dry. In mechanical matters I am reactionary, for I cannot believe in inventions and machinery unless they can be so controlled as to minister definitely to health and happiness――and how difficult that is! In my own country the townsman has become physically inferior to the countryman (speaking in the large), and I infer from this that we British――at all events――are not so in command of ourselves and our wonderful inventions and machines that we are putting them to uses which are really beneficent. If we had proper command of ourselves no doubt we could do this, but we haven’t; and if you look about you in America, the same doubt may possibly attack you.

But there is another side to the exploitation of the air which does not as yet affect you in America as it does us in Europe――the destructive side. Britain, for instance, is no longer an island. In five or ten years it will, I think, be impossible to guarantee the safety of Britain and Britain’s commerce, by sea-power; and those who continue to pin faith to that formula will find themselves nearly as much back-numbered as people who continued to prefer wooden ships to iron, when the iron age came in. Armaments on land and sea will be limited; not, I think, so much by a League of Nations, if it comes, as by the commonsense of people who begin to observe that with the development of the powers of destruction and of transport from the air, land and sea armaments are becoming of little use. We may all disarm completely, and yet――so long as there are flying-machines and high explosives――remain almost as formidably destructive as ever. So difficult to control, so infinite in its possibilities for evil and so limited in its possibilities for good do I consider this exploitation of the air that, personally, I would rejoice to see the nations in solemn conclave agree this very minute to ban the use of the air altogether, whether for trade, travel, or war; destroy every flying-machine and every airship, and forbid their construction. That, of course, is a consummation which will remain devoutly to be wished. Every day one reads in one’s paper that some country or other is to take the lead in the air. What a wild-goose chase we are in for! I verily believe mankind will come one day in their underground dwellings to the annual practice of burning in effigy the Guy (whoever he was) who first rose off the earth. After I had talked in this strain once before, a young airman came up to me and said: “Have you been up?” I shook my head. “You wait!” he said. When I do go up I shall take great pains not to go up with that one.

We come now to the fourth great new factor――Bolshevism, and the social unrest. But I am shy of saying anything about it, for my knowledge and experience are insufficient. I will only offer one observation. Whatever philosophic cloak may be thrown over the shoulders of Bolshevism, it is obviously――like every revolutionary movement of the past――an aggregation of individual discontents, the sum of millions of human moods of dissatisfaction with the existing state of things; and whatever philosophic cloak we drape on the body of liberalism, if by that name we may designate our present social and political system――that system has clearly not yet justified its claim to the word evolutionary, so long as the disproportion between the very rich and the very poor continues (as hitherto it has) to grow. No system can properly be called evolutionary which provokes against it the rising of so formidable a revolutionary wave of discontent. One hears that co-operation is now regarded as _vieux jeu_. If that be so, it is because co-operation in its true sense of spontaneous friendliness between man and man, has never been tried. Perhaps human nature in the large can never rise to that ideal. But if it cannot, if industrialism cannot achieve a change of heart, so that in effect employers would rather their profits (beyond a quite moderate scale) were used for the amelioration of the lot of those they employ, it looks to me uncommonly like being the end of the present order of things, after an era of class-struggle which will shake civilisation to its foundations. Being myself an evolutionist, who fundamentally distrusts violence, and admires the old Greek saying: “God is the helping of man by man,” I yet hope it will not come to that; I yet believe we may succeed in striking the balance, without civil wars. But I feel that (speaking of Europe) it is touch and go. In America, in Canada, in Australia, the conditions are different, the powers of expansion still large, the individual hopefulness much greater. There is little analogy with the state of things in Europe; but, whatever happens in Europe must have its infectious influence in America. The wise man takes Time by the forelock――and goes in front of events.

Let me turn away to the fifth great new factor: The impetus towards a League of Nations.

This, to my thinking, so wholly advisable, would inspire more hopefulness, if the condition of Europe was not so terribly confused, and if the most salient characteristics of human nature were not elasticity, bluntness of imagination, and shortness of memory. Those of us who, while affirming the principle of the League, are afraid of committing ourselves to what obviously cannot at the start be a perfect piece of machinery, seem inclined to forget that if the assembled Statesmen fail to _place in running order, now_, some definite machinery for the consideration of international disputes, the chance will certainly slip. We cannot reckon on more than a very short time during which the horror of war will rule our thoughts and actions. And during that short time it is essential that the League should have had some tangible success in preventing war. Mankind puts its faith in facts, not theories; in proven, and not in problematic, success. One can imagine with what profound suspicion and contempt the armed individualists of the Neolithic Age regarded the first organised tribunal; with what surprise they found that it actually worked so well that they felt justified in dropping their habit of taking the lives and property of their neighbours first and thinking over it afterwards. Not till the Tribunal of the League of Nations has had successes of conciliation, visible to all, will the armed individualist nations of to-day begin to rub their cynical and suspicious eyes, and to sprinkle their armour with moth-powder. No one who, like myself, has recently experienced the sensation of landing in America after having lived in Europe throughout the war, can fail to realise the reluctance of Americans to commit themselves, and the difficulty Americans have in realising the need for doing so. But may I remind Americans that during the first years of the war there was practically the same general American reluctance to interfere in an old-world struggle; and that in the end America found that it was not an old-world but a world-struggle. It is entirely reasonable to dislike snatching chestnuts out of the fire for other people, and to shun departure from the letter of cherished tradition; but things do not stand still in this world; storm centres shift; and live doctrine often becomes dead dogma.