All Things Considered
he thought “that they might congratulate themselves that the style of
caricature which found acceptation nowadays was very different from the
lampoon of the old days.” Continuing, he said, according to the
newspaper report, “On looking back to the political lampoons of
Rowlandson’s and Gilray’s time they would find them coarse and brutal.
In some countries abroad still, ‘even in America,’ the method of
political caricature was of the bludgeon kind. The fact was we had
passed the bludgeon stage. If they were brutal in attacking a man, even
for political reasons, they roused sympathy for the man who was
attacked. What they had to do was to rub in the point they wanted to
emphasise as gently as they could.” (Laughter and applause.)
Anybody reading these words, and anybody who heard them, will certainly
feel that there is in them a great deal of truth, as well as a great
deal of geniality. But along with that truth and with that geniality
there is a streak of that erroneous type of optimism which is founded
on the fallacy of which I have spoken above. Before we congratulate
ourselves upon the absence of certain faults from our nation or
society, we ought to ask ourselves why it is that these faults are
absent. Are we without the fault because we have the opposite virtue?
Or are we without the fault because we have the opposite fault? It is a
good thing assuredly, to be innocent of any excess; but let us be sure
that we are not innocent of excess merely by being guilty of defect. Is
it really true that our English political satire is so moderate because
it is so magnanimous, so forgiving, so saintly? Is it penetrated
through and through with a mystical charity, with a psychological
tenderness? Do we spare the feelings of the Cabinet Minister because we
pierce through all his apparent crimes and follies down to the dark
virtues of which his own soul is unaware? Do we temper the wind to the
Leader of the Opposition because in our all-embracing heart we pity and
cherish the struggling spirit of the Leader of the Opposition? Briefly,
have we left off being brutal because we are too grand and generous to
be brutal? Is it really true that we are _better_ than brutality? Is it
really true that we have _passed_ the bludgeon stage?
I fear that there is, to say the least of it, another side to the
matter. Is it not only too probable that the mildness of our political
satire, when compared with the political satire of our fathers, arises
simply from the profound unreality of our current politics? Rowlandson
and Gilray did not fight merely because they were naturally pothouse
pugilists; they fought because they had something to fight about. It is
easy enough to be refined about things that do not matter; but men
kicked and plunged a little in that portentous wrestle in which swung
to and fro, alike dizzy with danger, the independence of England, the
independence of Ireland, the independence of France. If we wish for a
proof of this fact that the lack of refinement did not come from mere
brutality, the proof is easy. The proof is that in that struggle no
personalities were more brutal than the really refined personalities.
None were more violent and intolerant than those who were by nature
polished and sensitive. Nelson, for instance, had the nerves and good
manners of a woman: nobody in his senses, I suppose, would call Nelson
“brutal.” But when he was touched upon the national matter, there
sprang out of him a spout of oaths, and he could only tell men to
“Kill! kill! kill the d----d Frenchmen.” It would be as easy to take
examples on the other side. Camille Desmoulins was a man of much the
same type, not only elegant and sweet in temper, but almost tremulously
tender and humanitarian. But he was ready, he said, “to embrace Liberty
upon a pile of corpses.” In Ireland there were even more instances.
Robert Emmet was only one famous example of a whole family of men at
once sensitive and savage. I think that Mr. F.C. Gould is altogether
wrong in talking of this political ferocity as if it were some sort of
survival from ruder conditions, like a flint axe or a hairy man.
Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kind of sin. Intellectual cruelty is
certainly the worst kind of cruelty. But there is nothing in the least
barbaric or ignorant about intellectual cruelty. The great Renaissance
artists who mixed colours exquisitely mixed poisons equally
exquisitely; the great Renaissance princes who designed instruments of
music also designed instruments of torture. Barbarity, malignity, the
desire to hurt men, are the evil things generated in atmospheres of
intense reality when great nations or great causes are at war. We may,
perhaps, be glad that we have not got them: but it is somewhat
dangerous to be proud that we have not got them. Perhaps we are hardly
great enough to have them. Perhaps some great virtues have to be
generated, as in men like Nelson or Emmet, before we can have these
vices at all, even as temptations. I, for one, believe that if our
caricaturists do not hate their enemies, it is not because they are too
big to hate them, but because their enemies are not big enough to hate.
I do not think we have passed the bludgeon stage. I believe we have not
come to the bludgeon stage. We must be better, braver, and purer men
than we are before we come to the bludgeon stage.
Let us then, by all means, be proud of the virtues that we have not
got; but let us not be too arrogant about the virtues that we cannot
help having. It may be that a man living on a desert island has a right
to congratulate himself upon the fact that he can meditate at his ease.
But he must not congratulate himself on the fact that he is on a desert
island, and at the same time congratulate himself on the self-restraint
he shows in not going to a ball every night. Similarly our England may
have a right to congratulate itself upon the fact that her politics are
very quiet, amicable, and humdrum. But she must not congratulate
herself upon that fact and also congratulate herself upon the
self-restraint she shows in not tearing herself and her citizens into
rags. Between two English Privy Councillors polite language is a mark
of civilisation, but really not a mark of magnanimity.
Allied to this question is the kindred question on which we so often
hear an innocent British boast—the fact that our statesmen are
privately on very friendly relations, although in Parliament they sit
on opposite sides of the House. Here, again, it is as well to have no
illusions. Our statesmen are not monsters of mystical generosity or
insane logic, who are really able to hate a man from three to twelve
and to love him from twelve to three. If our social relations are more
peaceful than those of France or America or the England of a hundred
years ago, it is simply because our politics are more peaceful; not
improbably because our politics are more fictitious. If our statesmen
agree more in private, it is for the very simple reason that they agree
more in public. And the reason they agree so much in both cases is
really that they belong to one social class; and therefore the dining
life is the real life. Tory and Liberal statesmen like each other, but
it is not because they are both expansive; it is because they are both
exclusive.
PATRIOTISM AND SPORT
I notice that some papers, especially papers that call themselves
patriotic, have fallen into quite a panic over the fact that we have
been twice beaten in the world of sport, that a Frenchman has beaten us
at golf, and that Belgians have beaten us at rowing. I suppose that the
incidents are important to any people who ever believed in the
self-satisfied English legend on this subject. I suppose that there are
men who vaguely believe that we could never be beaten by a Frenchman,
despite the fact that we have often been beaten by Frenchmen, and once
by a Frenchwoman. In the old pictures in _Punch_ you will find a
recurring piece of satire. The English caricaturists always assumed
that a Frenchman could not ride to hounds or enjoy English hunting. It
did not seem to occur to them that all the people who founded English
hunting were Frenchmen. All the Kings and nobles who originally rode to
hounds spoke French. Large numbers of those Englishmen who still ride
to hounds have French names. I suppose that the thing is important to
any one who is ignorant of such evident matters as these. I suppose
that if a man has ever believed that we English have some sacred and
separate right to be athletic, such reverses do appear quite enormous
and shocking. They feel as if, while the proper sun was rising in the
east, some other and unexpected sun had begun to rise in the
north-north-west by north. For the benefit, the moral and intellectual
benefit of such people, it may be worth while to point out that the
Anglo-Saxon has in these cases been defeated precisely by those
competitors whom he has always regarded as being out of the running; by
Latins, and by Latins of the most easy and unstrenuous type; not only
by Frenchman, but by Belgians. All this, I say, is worth telling to any
intelligent person who believes in the haughty theory of Anglo-Saxon
superiority. But, then, no intelligent person does believe in the
haughty theory of Anglo-Saxon superiority. No quite genuine Englishman
ever did believe in it. And the genuine Englishman these defeats will
in no respect dismay.
The genuine English patriot will know that the strength of England has
never depended upon any of these things; that the glory of England has
never had anything to do with them, except in the opinion of a large
section of the rich and a loose section of the poor which copies the
idleness of the rich. These people will, of course, think too much of
our failure, just as they thought too much of our success. The typical
Jingoes who have admired their countrymen too much for being conquerors
will, doubtless, despise their countrymen too much for being conquered.
But the Englishman with any feeling for England will know that athletic
failures do not prove that England is weak, any more than athletic
successes proved that England was strong. The truth is that athletics,
like all other things, especially modern, are insanely individualistic.
The Englishmen who win sporting prizes are exceptional among
Englishmen, for the simple reason that they are exceptional even among
men. English athletes represent England just about as much as Mr.
Barnum’s freaks represent America. There are so few of such people in
the whole world that it is almost a toss-up whether they are found in
this or that country.
If any one wants a simple proof of this, it is easy to find. When the
great English athletes are not exceptional Englishmen they are
generally not Englishmen at all. Nay, they are often representatives of
races of which the average tone is specially incompatible with
athletics. For instance, the English are supposed to rule the natives
of India in virtue of their superior hardiness, superior activity,
superior health of body and mind. The Hindus are supposed to be our
subjects because they are less fond of action, less fond of openness
and the open air. In a word, less fond of cricket. And, substantially,
this is probably true, that the Indians are less fond of cricket. All
the same, if you ask among Englishmen for the very best cricket-player,
you will find that he is an Indian. Or, to take another case: it is,
broadly speaking, true that the Jews are, as a race, pacific,
intellectual, indifferent to war, like the Indians, or, perhaps,
contemptuous of war, like the Chinese: nevertheless, of the very good
prize-fighters, one or two have been Jews.
This is one of the strongest instances of the particular kind of evil