Books: A Miscellany of Men

G >> G. K. Chesterton >> A Miscellany of Men

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But there are other kinds of fire; and better. The one great advantage of
this strange national temper is that, from the beginning of all chronicles,
it has provided resistance as well as cruelty. In Scotland nearly
everything has always been in revolt--especially loyalty. If these people
are capable of making Glasgow, they are also capable of wrecking it; and
the thought of my many good friends in that city makes me really doubtful
about which would figure in human memories as the more huge calamity of
the two. In Scotland there are many rich men so weak as to call
themselves strong. But there are not so many poor men weak enough to
believe them.

As I came out of Glasgow I saw men standing about the road. They had
little lanterns tied to the fronts of their caps, like the fairies who
used to dance in the old fairy pantomimes. They were not, however,
strictly speaking, fairies. They might have been called gnomes, since
they worked in the chasms of those purple and chaotic hills. They worked
in the mines from whence comes the fuel of our fires. Just at the moment
when I saw them, moreover, they were not dancing; nor were they working.
They were doing nothing. Which, in my opinion (and I trust yours), was
the finest thing they could do.

THE SECTARIAN OF SOCIETY

A fixed creed is absolutely indispensable to freedom. For while men are
and should be various, there must be some communication between them if
they are to get any pleasure out of their variety. And an intellectual
formula is the only thing that can create a communication that does not
depend on mere blood, class, or capricious sympathy. If we all start with
the agreement that the sun and moon exist, we can talk about our different
visions of them. The strong-eyed man can boast that he sees the sun as a
perfect circle. The shortsighted man may say (or if he is an
impressionist, boast) that he sees the moon as a silver blur. The
colour-blind man may rejoice in the fairy-trick which enables him to live
under a green sun and a blue moon. But if once it be held that there is
nothing but a silver blur in one man's eye or a bright circle (like a
monocle) in the other man's, then neither is free, for each is shut up in
the cell of a separate universe.

But, indeed, an even worse fate, practically considered, follows from the
denim of the original intellectual formula. Not only does the individual
become narrow, but he spreads narrowness across the world like a cloud; he
causes narrowness to increase and multiply like a weed. For what happens
is this: that all the shortsighted people come together and build a city
called Myopia, where they take short-sightedness for granted and paint
short-sighted pictures and pursue very short-sighted policies. Meanwhile
all the men who can stare at the sun get together on Salisbury Plain and
do nothing but stare at the sun; and all the men who see a blue moon band
themselves together and assert the blue moon, not once in a blue moon, but
incessantly. So that instead of a small and varied group, you have
enormous monotonous groups. Instead of the liberty of dogma, you have the
tyranny of taste.

Allegory apart, instances of what I mean will occur to every one; perhaps
the most obvious is Socialism. Socialism means the ownership by the organ
of government (whatever it is) of all things necessary to production. If
a man claims to be a Socialist in that sense he can be any kind of man he
likes in any other sense--a bookie, a Mahatma, a man about town, an
archbishop, a Margate nigger. Without recalling at the moment
clear-headed Socialists in all of these capacities, it is obvious that a
clear-headed Socialist (that is, a Socialist with a creed) can be a
soldier, like Mr. Blatchford, or a Don, like Mr. Ball, or a Bathchairman
like Mr. Meeke, or a clergyman like Mr. Conrad Noel, or an artistic
tradesman like the late Mr. William Morris.

But some people call themselves Socialists, and will not be bound by what
they call a narrow dogma; they say that Socialism means far, far more than
this; all that is high, all that is free, all that is, etc., etc. Now
mark their dreadful fate; for they become totally unfit to be tradesmen,
or soldiers, or clergymen, or any other stricken human thing, but become a
particular sort of person who is always the same. When once it has been
discovered that Socialism does not mean a narrow economic formula, it is
also discovered that Socialism does mean wearing one particular kind of
clothes, reading one particular kind of books, hanging up one particular
kind of pictures, and in the majority of cases even eating one particular
kind of food. For men must recognise each other somehow. These men will
not know each other by a principle, like fellow citizens. They cannot know
each other by a smell, like dogs. So they have to fall back on general
colouring; on the fact that a man of their sort will have a wife in pale
green and Walter Crane's "Triumph of Labour" hanging in the hall.

There are, of course, many other instances; for modern society is almost
made up of these large monochrome patches. Thus I, for one, regret the
supersession of the old Puritan unity, founded on theology, but embracing
all types from Milton to the grocer, by that newer Puritan unity which is
founded rather on certain social habits, certain common notions, both
permissive and prohibitive, in connection with Particular social pleasures.

Thus I, for one, regret that (if you are going to have an aristocracy) it
did not remain a logical one founded on the science of heraldry; a thing
asserting and defending the quite defensible theory that physical
genealogy is the test; instead of being, as it is now, a mere machine of
Eton and Oxford for varnishing anybody rich enough with one monotonous
varnish.

And it is supremely so in the case of religion. As long as you have a
creed, which every one in a certain group believes or is supposed to
believe, then that group will consist of the old recurring figures of
religious history, who can be appealed to by the creed and judged by it;
the saint, the hypocrite, the brawler, the weak brother. These people do
each other good; or they all join together to do the hypocrite good, with
heavy and repeated blows. But once break the bond of doctrine which alone
holds these people together and each will gravitate to his own kind
outside the group. The hypocrites will all get together and call each
other saints; the saints will get lost in a desert and call themselves
weak brethren; the weak brethren will get weaker and weaker in a general
atmosphere of imbecility; and the brawler will go off looking for somebody
else with whom to brawl.

This has very largely happened to modern English religion; I have been in
many churches, chapels, and halls where a confident pride in having got
beyond creeds was coupled with quite a paralysed incapacity to get beyond
catchwords. But wherever the falsity appears it comes from neglect of the
same truth: that men should agree on a principle, that they may differ on
everything else; that God gave men a law that they might turn it into
liberties.

There was hugely more sense in the old people who said that a wife and
husband ought to have the same religion than there is in all the
contemporary gushing about sister souls and kindred spirits and auras of
identical colour. As a matter of fact, the more the sexes are in violent
contrast the less likely they are to be in violent collision. The more
incompatible their tempers are the better. Obviously a wife's soul cannot
possibly be a sister soul. It is very seldom so much as a first cousin.
There are very few marriages of identical taste and temperament; they are
generally unhappy. But to have the same fundamental theory, to think the
same thing a virtue, whether you practise or neglect it, to think the same
thing a sin, whether you punish or pardon or laugh at it, in the last
extremity to call the same thing duty and the same thing disgrace--this
really is necessary to a tolerably happy marriage; and it is much better
represented by a common religion than it is by affinities and auras. And
what applies to the family applies to the nation. A nation with a root
religion will be tolerant. A nation with no religion will be bigoted.
Lastly, the worst effect of all is this: that when men come together to
profess a creed, they come courageously, though it is to hide in catacombs
and caves. But when they come together in a clique they come sneakishly,
eschewing all change or disagreement, though it is to dine to a brass band
in a big London hotel. For birds of a feather flock together, but birds
of the white feather most of all.

THE FOOL

For many years I had sought him, and at last I found him in a club. I had
been told that he was everywhere; but I had almost begun to think that he
was nowhere. I had been assured that there were millions of him; but
before my late discovery I inclined to think that there were none of him.
After my late discovery I am sure that there is one; and I incline to
think that there are several, say, a few hundreds; but unfortunately most
of them occupying important positions. When I say "him," I mean the
entire idiot.

I have never been able to discover that "stupid public" of which so many
literary men complain. The people one actually meets in trains or at
tea parties seem to me quite bright and interesting; certainly quite enough
so to call for the full exertion of one's own wits. And even when I have
heard brilliant "conversationalists" conversing with other people, the
conversation had much more equality and give and take than this age of
intellectual snobs will admit. I have sometimes felt tired, like other
people; but rather tired with men's talk and variety than with their
stolidity or sameness; therefore it was that I sometimes longed to find
the refreshment of a single fool.

But it was denied me. Turn where I would I found this monotonous
brilliancy of the general intelligence, this ruthless, ceaseless sparkle
of humour and good sense. The "mostly fools" theory has been used in an
anti-democratic sense; but when I found at last my priceless ass, I did
not find him in what is commonly called the democracy; nor in the
aristocracy either. The man of the democracy generally talks quite
rationally, sometimes on the anti-democratic side, but always with an idea
of giving reasons for what he says and referring to the realities of his
experience. Nor is it the aristocracy that is stupid; at least, not that
section of the aristocracy which represents it in politics. They are
often cynical, especially about money, but even their boredom tends to
make them a little eager for any real information or originality. If a
man like Mr. Winston Churchill or Mr. Wyndham made up his mind for any
reason to attack Syndicalism he would find out what it was first. Not so
the man I found in the club.

He was very well dressed; he had a heavy but handsome face; his black
clothes suggested the City and his gray moustaches the Army; but the whole
suggested that he did not really belong to either, but was one of those
who dabble in shares and who play at soldiers. There was some third
element about him that was neither mercantile nor military. His manners
were a shade too gentlemanly to be quite those of a gentleman. They
involved an unction and over-emphasis of the club-man: then I suddenly
remembered feeling the same thing in some old actors or old playgoers who
had modelled themselves on actors. As I came in he said, "If I was the
Government," and then put a cigar in his mouth which he lit carefully with
long intakes of breath. Then he took the cigar out of his mouth again and
said, "I'd give it 'em," as if it were quite a separate sentence. But
even while his mouth was stopped with the cigar his companion or
interlocutor leaped to his feet and said with great heartiness, snatching
up a hat, "Well, I must be off. Tuesday!". I dislike these dark
suspicions, but I certainly fancied I recognised the sudden geniality with
which one takes leave of a bore.

When, therefore, he removed the narcotic stopper from his mouth it was to
me that he addressed the belated epigram. "I'd give it 'em."

"What would you give them," I asked, "the minimum wage?"

"I'd give them beans," he said. "I'd shoot 'em down shoot 'em down, every
man Jack of them. I lost my best train yesterday, and here's the whole
country paralysed, and here's a handful of obstinate fellows standing
between the country and coal. I'd shoot 'em down!"

"That would surely be a little harsh," I pleaded. "After all, they are
not under martial law, though I suppose two or three of them have
commissions in the Yeomanry."

"Commissions in the Yeomanry!" he repeated, and his eyes and face, which
became startling and separate, like those of a boiled lobster, made me
feel sure that he had something of the kind himself.

"Besides," I continued, "wouldn't it be quite enough to confiscate their
money?"

"Well, I'd send them all to penal servitude, anyhow," he said, "and I'd
confiscate their funds as well."

"The policy is daring and full of difficulty," I replied, "but I do not
say that it is wholly outside the extreme rights of the republic. But you
must remember that though the facts of property have become quite
fantastic, yet the sentiment of property still exists. These coal-owners,
though they have not earned the mines, though they could not work the
mines, do quite honestly feel that they own the mines. Hence your
suggestion of shooting them down, or even of confiscating their property,
raises very--"

"What do you mean?" asked the man with the cigar, with a bullying eye.
"Who yer talking about?"

"I'm talking about what you were talking about," I replied; "as you put it
so perfectly, about the handful of obstinate fellows who are standing
between the country and the coal. I mean the men who are selling their
own coal for fancy prices, and who, as long as they can get those prices,
care as little for national starvation as most merchant princes and
pirates have cared for the provinces that were wasted or the peoples that
were enslaved just before their ships came home. But though I am a bit of
a revolutionist myself, I cannot quite go with you in the extreme violence
you suggest. You say--"

"I say," he cried, bursting through my speech with a really splendid
energy like that of some noble beast, "I say I'd take all these blasted
miners and--"

I had risen slowly to my feet, for I was profoundly moved; and I stood
staring at that mental monster.

"Oh," I said, "so it is the miners who are all to be sent to penal
servitude, so that we may get more coal. It is the miners who are to be
shot dead, every man Jack of them; for if once they are all shot dead they
will start mining again...You must forgive me, sir; I know I seem somewhat
moved. The fact is, I have just found something. Something I have been
looking for four years."

"Well," he asked, with no unfriendly stare, "and what have you found?"

"No," I answered, shaking my head sadly, "I do not think it would be quite
kind to tell you what I have found."

He had a hundred virtues, including the capital virtue of good humour, and
we had no difficulty in changing the subject and forgetting the
disagreement. He talked about society, his town friends and his country
sports, and I discovered in the course of it that he was a county
magistrate, a Member of Parliament, and a director of several important
companies. He was also that other thing, which I did not tell him.

The moral is that a certain sort of person does exist, to whose glory this
article is dedicated. He is not the ordinary man. He is not the miner,
who is sharp enough to ask for the necessities of existence. He is not
the mine-owner, who is sharp enough to get a great deal more, by selling
his coal at the best possible moment. He is not the aristocratic
politician, who has a cynical but a fair sympathy with both economic
opportunities. But he is the man who appears in scores of public places
open to the upper middle class or (that less known but more powerful
section) the lower upper class. Men like this all over the country are
really saying whatever comes into their heads in their capacities of
justice of the peace, candidate for Parliament, Colonel of the Yeomanry,
old family doctor, Poor Law guardian, coroner, or above all, arbiter in
trade disputes. He suffers, in the literal sense, from softening of the
brain; he has softened it by always taking the view of everything most
comfortable for his country, his class, and his private personality. He
is a deadly public danger. But as I have given him his name at the
beginning of this article there is no need for me to repeat it at the end.

THE CONSCRIPT AND THE CRISIS

Very few of us ever see the history of our own time happening. And I
think the best service a modern journalist can do to society is to record
as plainly as ever he can exactly what impression was produced on his mind
by anything he has actually seen and heard on the outskirts of any modern
problem or campaign. Though all he saw of a railway strike was a flat
meadow in Essex in which a train was becalmed for an hour or two, he will
probably throw more light on the strike by describing this which he has
seen than by describing the steely kings of commerce and the bloody
leaders of the mob whom he has never seen--nor any one else either. If he
comes a day too late for the battle of Waterloo (as happened to a friend
of my grandfather) he should still remember that a true account of the day
after Waterloo would be a most valuable thing to have. Though he was on
the wrong side of the door when Rizzio was being murdered, we should still
like to have the wrong side described in the right way. Upon this
principle I, who know nothing of diplomacy or military arrangements, and
have only held my breath like the rest of the world while France and
Germany were bargaining, will tell quite truthfully of a small scene I saw,
one of the thousand scenes that were, so to speak, the anterooms of that
inmost chamber of debate.

In the course of a certain morning I came into one of the quiet squares of
a small French town and found its cathedral. It was one of those gray and
rainy days which rather suit the Gothic. The clouds were leaden, like the
solid blue-gray lead of the spires and the jewelled windows; the sloping
roofs and high-shouldered arches looked like cloaks drooping with damp;
and the stiff gargoyles that stood out round the walls were scoured with
old rains and new. I went into the round, deep porch with many doors and
found two grubby children playing there out of the rain. I also found a
notice of services, etc., and among these I found the announcement that at
11.30 (that is about half an hour later) there would be a special service
for the Conscripts, that is to say, the draft of young men who were being
taken from their homes in that little town and sent to serve in the French
Army; sent (as it happened) at an awful moment, when the French Army was
encamped at a parting of the ways. There were already a great many people
there when I entered, not only of all kinds, but in all attitudes,
kneeling, sitting, or standing about. And there was that general sense
that strikes every man from a Protestant country, whether he dislikes the
Catholic atmosphere or likes it; I mean, the general sense that the thing
was "going on all the time"; that it was not an occasion, but a perpetual
process, as if it were a sort of mystical inn.

Several tricolours were hung quite near to the altar, and the young men,
when they came in, filed up the church and sat right at the front. They
were, of course, of every imaginable social grade; for the French
conscription is really strict and universal. Some looked like young
criminals, some like young priests, some like both. Some were so
obviously prosperous and polished that a barrack-room must seem to them
like hell; others (by the look of them) had hardly ever been in so decent
a place. But it was not so much the mere class variety that most sharply
caught an Englishman's eye. It was the presence of just those one or two
kinds of men who would never have become soldiers in any other way.

There are many reasons for becoming a soldier. It may be a matter of
hereditary luck or abject hunger or heroic virtue or fugitive vice; it may
be an interest in the work or a lack of interest in any other work. But
there would always be two or three kinds of people who would never tend to
soldiering; all those kinds of people were there. A lad with red hair,
large ears, and very careful clothing, somehow conveyed across the church
that he had always taken care of his health, not even from thinking about
it, but simply because he was told, and that he was one of those who pass
from childhood to manhood without any shock of being a man. In the row
in front of him there was a very slight and vivid little Jew, of the sort
that is a tailor and a Socialist. By one of those accidents that make
real life so unlike anything else, he was the one of the company who
seemed especially devout. Behind these stiff or sensitive boys were
ranged the ranks of their mothers and fathers, with knots and bunches of
their little brothers and sisters.

The children kicked their little legs, wriggled about the seats, and gaped
at the arched roof while their mothers were on their knees praying their
own prayers, and here and there crying. The gray clouds of rain outside
gathered, I suppose, more and more; for the deep church continuously
darkened. The lads in front began to sing a military hymn in odd, rather
strained voices; I could not disentangle the words, but only one perpetual
refrain; so that it sounded like

Sacrarterumbrrar pour la patrie,
Valdarkararump pour la patrie.

Then this ceased; and silence continued, the coloured windows growing
gloomier and gloomier with the clouds. In the dead stillness a child
started crying suddenly and incoherently. In a city far to the north a
French diplomatist and a German aristocrat were talking.

I will not make any commentary on the thing that could blur the outline of
its almost cruel actuality. I will not talk nor allow any one else to
talk about "clericalism" and "militarism." Those who talk like that are
made of the same mud as those who call all the angers of the unfortunate
"Socialism." The women who were calling in the gloom around me on God and
the Mother of God were not "clericalists "; or, if they were, they had
forgotten it. And I will bet my boots the young men were not
"militarists"--quite the other way just then. The priest made a short
speech; he did not utter any priestly dogmas (whatever they are), he
uttered platitudes. In such circumstances platitudes are the only
possible things to say; because they are true. He began by saying that he
supposed a large number of them would be uncommonly glad not to go. They
seemed to assent to this particular priestly dogma with even more than
their alleged superstitious credulity. He said that war was hateful, and
that we all hated it; but that "in all things reasonable" the law of one's
own commonwealth was the voice of God. He spoke about Joan of Arc; and
how she had managed to be a bold and successful soldier while still
preserving her virtue and practising her religion; then he gave them each
a little paper book. To which they replied (after a brief interval for
reflection):

Pongprongperesklang pour la patrie,
Tambraugtararronc pour la patrie.

which I feel sure was the best and most pointed reply.

While all this was happening feelings quite indescribable crowded about my
own darkening brain, as the clouds crowded above the darkening church.
They were so entirely of the elements and the passions that I cannot utter
them in an idea, but only in an image. It seemed to me that we were
barricaded in this church, but we could not tell what was happening
outside the church. The monstrous and terrible jewels of the windows
darkened or glistened under moving shadow or light, but the nature of that
light and the shapes of those shadows we did not know and hardly dared to
guess. The dream began, I think, with a dim fancy that enemies were
already in the town, and that the enormous oaken doors were groaning under
their hammers. Then I seemed to suppose that the town itself had been
destroyed by fire, and effaced, as it may be thousands of years hence, and
that if I opened the door I should come out on a wilderness as flat and
sterile as the sea. Then the vision behind the veil of stone and slate
grew wilder with earthquakes. I seemed to see chasms cloven to the
foundations of all things, and letting up an infernal dawn. Huge things
happily hidden from us had climbed out of the abyss, and were striding
about taller than the clouds. And when the darkness crept from the
sapphires of Mary to the sanguine garments of St. John I fancied that some
hideous giant was walking round the church and looking in at each window
in turn.

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