Chapter 13

HISTORY AND POLITICS

_History is philosophy teaching by examples._

BOLINGBROKE.

_The science of Politics is the one science that is deposited by the stream of history, like grains of gold in the sand of a river._

ACTON.

Reared in the home of a political journalist, it was natural that Paul Jones should be attracted to public affairs. He followed with lively curiosity the progress of the two general elections of 1910, and from that year was an interested observer of political events. As he grew older his bent towards politics became more pronounced. A youth familiar with Roman, mediæval and modern history could not fail to be fascinated by the political drama unfolding before his eyes. He watched history in the making with the same eagerness that he read the history of the past. The prevailing tone at Dulwich, as at most public schools, is Conservative. Paul was a perfervid Liberal. In school and out of school, not only did he not disguise, he gloried in his advanced opinions. The extent of his political knowledge and the ripeness of his views were astonishing in one so young.

From the moment he began to think for himself his sympathies flowed out to the wage-earning classes. What he remembered and what he had heard of his Puritan grandfather, William Jones, a grand specimen of the Victorian artisan, who died in December, 1905, on the verge of 80, deepened his regard for them. But his own broad and sympathetic nature would have drawn him instinctively to their side. In his judgment it was on and by the working-classes that the wheels of the world moved forward. He had nothing but contempt for the sparrow-like frivolity of fashionable Society, and was repelled from the middle classes by their servitude to conventions, their prejudices social and political, and their non-receptivity to ideas. He for his part must breathe an ampler air. He was wont to speak disdainfully of the Victorian era, because, in spite of all the advances it witnessed in the physical sciences and of Britain's rapid growth in wealth between 1850 and 1890, it did so little for social welfare.

For feudal magnates and the _nouveaux riches_ he had scant respect, holding that both the aristocracy and the plutocracy had used their political power for selfish ends. Old feudalism in some respects he regarded as better than new Capital, for the landed aristocracy did at least recognise some obligations to those under their sway, whereas Capital was so concerned with its rights that it forgot altogether its reciprocal duties. His view was that, under shelter of the _laissez-faire_ system, with its false presumption that employers and employed were on a parity in bargaining power, Capital had scandalously evaded its obligations to Labour. He regarded the conditions of life in some of our industrial districts as a grave reproach to the nation. The lust for wealth and other unlovely aspects of competitive commercialism were most repugnant to him. He knew that Nature cares not a rap for equality and lavishes her gifts with a strange caprice. But though there is inequality of natural gifts, he thought it was the duty of the State to ensure equality of opportunity to all its citizens. His ideal was a co-operative commonwealth, in which the competitive spirit would be held in check by communal needs and aims, and where every career would be opened freely to talent. In one of his essays he deplores the fact that political economists had fallen into the delusion of applying the laws that govern the exchange of commodities without any variation to Labour, and leaving out of account intangibles and imponderables like moral forces and other expressions of the delicate and mysterious human spirit. Political economy, he thought, would have to be recast and humanised. "The economists," he said, "have entirely ignored the human factor."

Paul's conviction was that when the rule of enlightened democracy was established wars would cease. "The peoples never want wars," he wrote; "under a pure democracy wars would be impossible." Because of the associations clustering around it the word "Imperialism" jarred on him, but he took pride in the greatness of the free and liberal British Empire, with its rule of law, its love of peace, its humane ideals. He had the historical sense in highly developed degree. The story of human progress stretched before the eye of his mind in a series of vivid pictures. Surveying the immense and imposing fabric of recorded events woven by the ceaseless loom of Time, he had an unerring instinct for the shining figures, the salient characteristic, the determining factor. Away from a library he could have written a quite tolerable essay on any century of the Christian era. Historical characters in whom he was specially interested were Julius Cæsar, Octavius, Charlemagne, the Emperor Charles V, Queen Elizabeth, Cromwell, Louis XIV, the elder Pitt, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon; and among the non-political Roger Bacon, Erasmus, Luther, Sir Thomas More, Isaac Newton, Faraday, and Darwin. The Elizabethan age had for him a magnetic attraction, because of the Queen with her enigmatical personality, marvellous statecraft and capacity for inspiring devotion, and of the brilliant galaxy of great men, statesmen and sailors, poets and scholars, who enriched her reign with so much glory. Another epoch he loved to study was that of the French Revolution. I have already referred to his habit of annotating the books he read. From notes he made on political books and from some of his essays I have culled the following:

Man's tool-using power is simply a symbol of man's unique reasoning gifts. Its connotations may be extended to mean the entire intellect.

The savage using his language with joy like a child, gives us the wealth of beautiful mythology about all natural objects.

It is wonderful to think that Julius Cæsar's imperial system was handed right down to the nineteenth century, until one not unlike Cæsar himself set his foot upon its neck in 1806. But long before it fell the Holy Roman Empire had really ceased, in Voltaire's words, to be holy, or Roman, or an empire.

Froude holds up to admiration the "serene calmness" of Tacitus, and says he took no side. But I ask anyone who has read the sarcastic remarks about Domitian and the Emperors in the "Agricola" whether he thinks Tacitus took no side in writing history.

Nothing can alter the fact that Mohammedanism has done a vast amount of good. Compare Carlyle's appreciation of Mahomet with Gibbon's acrimonious insinuations.

Much that is strange in human history is explained if we remember that aristocracies in the West were political, while in the East they were religious.

Hildebrand, who boldly declared that the Church compared to the State was as the sun to the moon--the State only shining by light borrowed from the greater orb--was now on the papal throne. His giant intellect and tremendous personality had overawed Henry IV into ignominious capitulation at Canossa. With Europe at his feet Hildebrand cannot but have desired to assert his authority over the island-State across the Channel. William the Conqueror and Hildebrand were rarely-matched antagonists--the one determined to set bounds to the Pope's scheme of world-domination; the Pope equally determined to bend the stubborn Norman to his will. It was the Conqueror who won.

The conception of the Norman Conquest has shifted from the grotesque over-estimate of Thierry to the under-estimate of Freeman and Maitland. To the moderns the Conquest is now little more than a change of dynasty. A juster estimate would be that the very change of dynasty gave the Conquest its vital importance.... The effects were really immense. The Conquest substituted for the degenerate race of Anglo-Saxon kings a virile dynasty able to give to England what it needed--a vigorous central administration--and brought the English people into the stream of European civilisation.

It was the hope of Erasmus that Catholic forms could be blended with the Greek spirit.

Luther's songs express the very soul of old Germany; above all, the great hymn "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott."

Though the Reformation in freeing the mind of man from ecclesiastical tyranny made eventually for political liberty, its whole tendency in England for the time being was in favour of absolute monarchy. Its first outcome here was to set up a secular monarchy, supreme in Church and State, founded on the theory of the divine right of kings, based on an aristocracy made loyal by the instinct of self-interest.

Commerce and national wealth were at stake in the war between England and Spain in the sixteenth century, and not merely, perhaps not even mainly, religion.

Drake was a very great sailor, but he was undoubtedly a buccaneer.

Many Ministers had been sent to the block for offences far less rank than those of Charles I; nevertheless, his execution was absolutely illegal and a fatal mistake in policy.

Few men experienced such hard treatment at the hands of fortune as Cromwell. In every case, save the rule of the major-generals, his constitutional experiments were wise, far-seeing and well-conceived. It was the perverse conduct of those who professed to be his followers that ruined all.

There has never been a shrewder king on a throne than Charles II.

In the popular view, James II will always be regarded as the tyrannical despot, the subverter of the religious and political institutions of England, while his brother, Charles II, will be looked upon as a kindly and amiable gentleman, who oppressed no one and treated everyone kindly. Yet in the view of the student of history Charles becomes the tyrant and James an honest though bigoted fool.

To compare the age of Cromwell with that of Charles II is to see the Dorian and Lydian spirits respectively in their most contrasted lights.

The difference between Richelieu and Mazarin is the difference between the creator and the developer.

The political revolution of 1688 was contemporaneous with a revolution in physics, shown by Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood; with a revolution in astronomical thought, shown by Newton's "Principia"; with a small revolution in literature, shown by the rise of English prose; with a revolution in popular feeling all over the world, as shown by the riots against excessive taxation in France and the ejection of de Witt in Holland. All the different threads of life seem to run interwoven, and one cannot be disturbed without disturbing the others.

The character of Frederick the Great was stained by many infamous deeds; he was in many ways unscrupulous, yet he was never petty, and he was devoted to his country. He was the greatest genius in practical reforms and in the art of war that the eighteenth century produced.

Frederick the Great has had a far stronger and better influence on history than a selfish, callous person like Louis XIV.

Of all the benevolent despots there is only one, Frederick the Great, to whom can be fitly applied what Johnson said of Goldsmith: "Let not his faults be remembered: he was a very great man."

Under a despotism the aristocracy loses all its powers, and, except for the bureaucracy and "King's friends," there is no privileged class unless the King is a weak man and under the thumb of his court (e.g., contrast the France of Louis XIV with that of Louis XV).

Carlyle in his "French Revolution" paints a wonderfully vivid picture of the idle, voluptuous noblesse of the eighteenth century: compare the views of de Tocqueville.

Carlyle in his grim account of the death-bed of Louis XV writes: "We will pry no further into the horrors of a sinner's death-bed." Paul's comment: "cf. the episode of the death of Front-de-Boeuf in 'Ivanhoe.'"

Lord Chesterfield saw clearly the symptoms of the coming Revolution in France. Only two other men in Europe foresaw that immense event: Goldsmith and Arthur Young. Note Gibbon's complacent attitude _in re_ France to illustrate the general lack of vision on the subject.

Voltaire's summing up of the consequences of Turgot's fall may be expressed in Sir Edward Grey's phrase: "Death, disaster and damnation."

If Louis XVI had been wiser and more capable, would he have averted the French Revolution? I think not. It is to be doubted whether even a strong king, after so many years of tyranny which had generated such hatred of the ancient regime, could have checked the flow of forces making for the Revolution. Apart from the effect of the old tyranny, new ideas of democracy were arising. Witness the contemporary failure of a great benevolent despot in Joseph II.

There was no idea of nationality in the foreign policy of the younger Pitt.

Hilaire Belloc's description of the guillotining of the Dantonists forms a picture among the most thrilling, enthralling and agonising that I know.

Fox stands out as one of the most brilliant failures and one of the most ineffective geniuses in history.

Before war broke out in 1870 the world believed in the military superiority of France. Only that grim trio, Bismarck, Moltke and Roon, knew the contrary.

William the First, grandfather of the present Kaiser, was an absurdly overestimated character. He owed all his success to his great Ministers.

Treitschke writes: "The territories drained by great rivers are usually centres of civilisation.... Our Rhine remains the king of all rivers, but what great thing has ever happened on the Danube?" Paul's comment on this:

"I know of only three great events on the Danube. One, the capture of Vienna by the Turks; two, the Battle of Blenheim; three, the Battle of Ulm."

The Jews are a truly extraordinary race. Though they have for centuries been persecuted, despised, outcast, so far from being crushed by their sufferings, they seem actually to have been toughened in fibre, and to-day they exercise a commanding influence in the world.

England's geographical position does not fit her for the rôle of a Continental Power. Her home is on the sea; her empire world-wide.

Each race, each nation, has its own characteristics, its own peculiar type of civilisation. Attempts to destroy these inherent qualities have time and time again been baffled--as the examples of the Jews, Poland and Alsace-Lorraine clearly demonstrate.... As Treitschke puts it: "The idea of a world-State is odious. The whole content of civilisation cannot be realised in a single State. Every people has the right to believe that certain powers of the Divine Reason display themselves in it at their highest."

Patriotism may indeed be but a larger form of selfishness, but it is a larger form. It does involve devotion to others. As long as men are men, it is so unlikely as almost to be impossible that patriotism will ever be replaced by cosmopolitanism.

A great point in favour of the rule of democracy is its character-building power.

It is customary in a certain class of society to abuse trade-unionism. People talk of the tyranny of trade-unionism; it would be as easy, perhaps more justifiable, to talk of the tyranny of Capital. The trade union has its counterpart in what are termed the "upper classes." For example, the British Medical Association is nothing but a trade union under another name. The trade union is an absolute necessity to the worker in modern society.

_Laissez-faire_ has advantages up to a point; State control has advantages up to a point. The most successful nation will be that one which succeeds in making a judicious mixture of the two systems.

The Englishman in his devil-may-care way does not trouble to persecute or oppress; his tolerant spirit, aided by the splendid devotion of a few great men, has, in the words of Seeley, built up a glorious free Empire "in a fit of absence of mind."

You will never make the English people idealistic, but you will never conquer them on that very account.

While the German talks and dreams of world-Empire, the Englishman smiles, puts his pipe in his mouth and goes off to found it by accident.

The modern system of diplomacy is as vile as anything can be. Even in England it is the negation of popular government.

Man's duty to his neighbour ought to be observed as well as the harsh and pitiless laws of trade and competition.

The social conditions of our industrial towns to-day are a standing indictment of the _laissez-faire_ system.

The great warrior is no more important than the humble toiler.

Gladstone's finance was governed by the determination to spend as little as possible. It does not seem to be so good as that of Lloyd George, viz., to be prepared to spend a great deal provided you are sure it is for the benefit of the people.

On a remark of Dr. Sarolea's _in re_ the alleged inherent antagonism between Europe and America on the one side and Asia and Africa on the other: "Absurd! If we are to be good Europeans we must first of all be good world citizens. The Asiatic is as much our brother as is the Belgian or the American."

It is not the case that England has checked Germany's Colonial development. Germany has herself to blame--herself and destiny. But I must say that Germany had to some extent right on her side in the Morocco dispute.

The Germans ignore the fact that wherever we British go we throw our ports open to the commerce of the world.

In the autumn of 1914 my son read General von Bernhardi's book, "Germany and the Next War." In his notes on this book he drew attention to Bernhardi's frequent self-contradictions and his false philosophy. From these notes the following excerpts are taken:

Here Bernhardi flatly contradicts the biological argument he uses earlier in the chapter. Biology knows nothing of States; it sees only human beings.

Look at the intimate connection between Darwinism and the political and economic views of the Individualist Radicals of the mid-Victorian era.

Bernhardi assumes that mere material existence is always to be man's destiny. But the perpetuation of existence beyond the immediate present cannot be guided by the instinct of grabbing.

The modern theory is that good and bad as abstract considerations do not exist, but that they are what experience shows to be best for us in the end. The animal knows this subconsciously; man consciously to a certain extent.

Emphatically No; mere brute force is not the law of the universe.

Bernhardi may as well talk of conquering the moon as of conquering the U.S.A.

Man's true development consists above all in the negation of his selfish elements for the good of humanity.

Bernhardi's proposition, "Only the State which strives after an enlarged sphere of influence can create the conditions under which mankind develops into the most splendid perfection," Paul counters by asking: "How does this theory fit in with the case of the Greeks, who, politically so weak, were yet intellectually so great that to-day, after 2,000 years, their influence in Europe is as great as ever? Which would you rather have been, tiny Greece or vast Persia?"

On Bernhardi's remark: "No excuse for revolutionary agitation in Germany now exists."

No excuse? When the people have no power at all, and can at any moment be led to the slaughter by a pack of Junkers--"all for the good of the State"; in other words, to give the military caste more wealth and dignity. In a few years Bernhardi will see whether the people have any cause for revolution or not.

The Germany of philosophy, poetry and song will rescue the German people from the abyss into which the War Lords have plunged them.

Germany was indeed unfortunate in entering the world as a great Power so late. But she will not make any progress by perpetually brandishing a sword before Europe.

I do think that Prussia's policy in the past was largely determined by her geographical situation.

The Entente with France was the price we paid for Egypt. Germany never entered our thoughts at all.

On Bernhardi's allusion to India, Paul wrote: "Curiously enough, the very day I read this I heard in the House of Commons the wonderful story of the gifts presented to the British Government for war purposes by the Indian princes. Such a passionate outburst of loyalty has never been equalled. This gratitude and devotion we have won not by the rule of force, but by that of justice and kindness."

In regard to Bernhardi's prediction that our self-governing Dominions would separate from the British Empire:

Our policy toward them nobly justified. Now in our time of need the Colonies have flown to our side.

God help civilisation when the Bernhardis set to work on it!

Strange that people so far apart as Bernhardi and we Socialists should yet be at one on this question of checking selfish individualism by measures of State Socialism.

A frequent visitor to the Lobby and Press Gallery of the House of Commons, my son was known to many members of Parliament and political journalists. Thanks to his free, affable manner, he was on terms of cordial regard with several of the attendants and police-constables on duty in and about the House of Commons. His last visit to the Press Gallery was in May, 1916. He was stirred by the life and movement of the House and enjoyed a good Parliamentary debate, but he had a feeling that politicians were apt to mistake illusions for realities and to think that words could take the place of deeds.

In the last three years of his life, though his democratic sympathies never waned, some of his opinions underwent a change. He was disappointed at the indifference of the masses of the people to their own interests, at their low standard of taste, at the ease with which they could be exploited by charlatans. I remember his telling me once, in 1915, _apropos_ of the blatancy of some noisy patriots: "I now realise for the first time what Dr. Johnson meant when he wrote, 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.'" He disliked the squalor of the political game and the glibness of tongue and tenuity of thought of the mere politician. A generous-minded youth of high ideals, he had not learnt to make allowances for political human nature, or for the fact that the mass of mankind are necessarily occupied with _petits soins_ and apt to be dulled by the mechanical routine of their daily lives. Latterly he often told me that, after all, there was a great deal to be said for the rule of the enlightened autocrat. "But," he said, "the mischief is that you can't guarantee a succession of enlightened autocrats; so we must make the best of the rule of the majority." The backwardness of England in education used to make him wring his hands. To lack of education he attributed the tawdriness and vulgarity of popular taste. I thought my own political and social views were advanced: to Paul I was little better than a Whig with a veneration for Mr. Gladstone. He had a bold, forward-looking mind, and was in favour of root-and-branch changes. He was only 21 when he died, and his views on social and political questions would doubtless have been modified in one direction or another had he lived. But his passion for liberty of thought and action and his deep sympathy with the unprivileged multitude would have remained, for these things were inherent in his character. He would have said with Ibsen: "I want to awaken the democracy to its true task--of making all the people noblemen by freeing their wills and purifying their minds."

Literature, athletics, music, politics did not exhaust the interests of this strong and eager mind. He was a good chess-player, and followed with lively curiosity the new developments in mechanics and aviation. Very fond of dogs, between him and our little fox-terrier there was a tie of deep affection. As indicative of the catholicity of his tastes I may mention that, going over his papers after his death, I discovered in the same drawer a manuscript appreciation of Wagner, "Football Hints," memoranda on "Pascal and Descartes on Method," and the outline of an essay on "The Norman Conquest and its Effects."