The War, called now the Great War, came in 1914, and smashed the growing tip of European civilisation. Mankind is like a huge old tree: there are deep roots that go down to the earth’s centre, and there is the massive stem of primitive culture, where all men are very much alike. All men, black, white, yellow, cover their nakedness and build themselves shelters, make fires and cook food, have laws of marriage and of family, care for their wives and their children, and have stores of wisdom and ancient lore, rules of morality and behaviour. All men are alike in these fundamentals: even the crudest black Australian aborigines. We should say, that in its roots and its massive trunk, the tree of mankind is undivided. Mankind is one great race, in its fundamentals always the same. Whereas the gulf that divides man from the animals is so great, that we can see no connection. We can no longer believe that man has descended from monkeys. Man has descended from man.
The difference between the most civilised man and the lowest savage with a black face and a flat nose is as nothing compared to the difference between that same stunted, ugly savage and the highest ape. The pigmy naked Bushman and the highly educated white man, once they meet and are acquainted, know each other man for man. The savage soon knows if I am a ‘good’ man: that is, if I am decent and brave and kindly. And if I am foolish, or affected, or even snobbish, the crude savage soon learns to despise me. He may be in awe of my white man’s powers:
my gun, my power to write letters, or to send telegrams, or to build railways. But if I am a poor specimen of a man, inwardly, even if I have a big strong body, the savage will soon know, and he will despise me, sneer at me, and play tricks on me. To be brave, to keep one’s word, to be generous, the savage recognises these as the first qualities in a man quite as quickly, or perhaps more quickly, than we white people do. It is manhood. And manhood is the same in all men, and the chief part of all men. Cleverness educated skill come far behind.
Man recognises man as his own sort, and manhood is manhood to the pigmy black as to the educated white, the heroic qualities are the same.
But man and monkey look at one another across a great and silent gulf, never to be crossed. The savage shakes hands with me, and each of us knows we are of one ancient blood-stream. But if I attempt to shake hands with a j monkey or an ape — it is a gesture only of mockery. We cannot really meet in touch.
In its root and trunk, Mankind is one. But then the differences begin. The great tree of man branches out into different races: huge branches, reaching far out in different directions. And each branch has its own growing tip.
So the races of mankind have grown in their different directions; the Egyptians and the Chinese, the Hindu and the Assyrians, the Aztecs and the Peruvians, the negroes and the Polynesians, the Mediterranean peoples that include Greece and Rome and Carthage, then the Germanic and Slavic races, and the modern Europeans: all huge branches on the one tree of mankind.
Every branch has its own direction and its own growing tip. One branch cannot take the place of any other branch. Each must go its own way, and bear its own flowers and fruits. For each branch is, as it were, differently grafted by a different spirit and idea, which becomes its own spirit and idea. My manhood is the same as the manhood of a Chinaman. But in spirit and idea we two are different and shall be different forever, as apple-blossom will forever be different from irises.
And each branch has its own growing tip. In every race, the growing tip is the living idea, which must never cease to change and develop. Once the living idea, the forward-reaching consciousness of any race dies and goes hard and dry, the vast branch of that race dies upon the tree of mankind, withers, goes dry rotten, and at length falls and disappears. As the great Egyptians and Babylonians have fallen and disappeared.
But as every branch of mankind has its own growing tip, so the whole tree of Man has one supreme travelling apex, one culminating growing tip. If this dies, the whole tree perishes. Or else, from some side socket, a new leading bud appears. Then the whole direction of the tree’s growth changes, the movement onward takes a new line.
For a thousand years, surely, we may say that Europe has been the growing tip on the tree of mankind. Man must change. Either he must grow, or he must die. Like a tree. There is no tree in the world which is the same this year as it was last. Either it has grown a bit or died a bit. And the same is true of every man, of every race, and of all mankind itself. Either it has grown a bit or died a bit.
But a man doesn’t grow just because he gets fatter. He may be getting fatter, but the spirit inside him may be flagging and dying. The same with a race or a nation. Populations may be increasing rapidly. But the spirit inside the people may at the same time be failing, and then, sooner or later, there will come a crash. Babylon, the great city, once increased by thousands every year. Now there is not a man left.
From time to time the tree of mankind begins to fail, it runs to wood, and its fruit grows more and more paltry. Then it must be pruned, and grafted with a new idea.
For a thousand years Europe has led the world, and grown apace. But our spirit and our manhood begin to weaken. Our idea and our ideal begin to peter out.
So the War came, and blew away forever our leading tip our growing tip. Now we are directionless.
Our great idea, during the last hundred years, has been the idea of Progress. We must all make progress. Every nation must make its own great strides of progress.
But again, it is like the tree. Each branch starts in its own separate direction. But if any branch spreads too hugely, it will spread above its neighbour, and cut off the light from that neighbour. And any branch that must grow in its neighbour’s shadow must slowly and surely die.
And this is progress.
We believed also in free competition, and we said that, as many young trees must grow together in a plantation if they are to grow straight and tall, so must men compete with one another in every way, freely. Every man must be free to compete with every other man, and there must be equality of opportunity.
Since the War these words make us feel sick, they have I proved such a swindle. But it is actually true that a plantation of young trees should be thick, the trees growing close upon one another, so that their struggle with one another for the light may send them upwards and keep them straight and erect. All very good for a plantation of young trees, with lots of space. Which is what Europe was, a hundred years ago.
But what of those young trees a hundred years later? They are just choking one another. Some manage to struggle above their neighbours, and there, once having got up into the air, they flourish fast. And the faster they flourish, the more they cut off the light from their neighbours below them. And the more the neighbours lose the light, the more they dwindle and expire.
Nothing is more depressing, in this respect, than a virgin forest. There are giants, and there are great growing youngsters. But at the same time there is a tangle and a misery of dwindling, thin trees which can hardly hold up, and which drop out their thin scratchy branches with dead brown tips; while on the ground a depth of fallen trees lies rotting.
The same applies among the nations. At first, plenty of room for all, and competition is the best thing possible, and equality of opportunity is the ideal. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Then some nations forge ahead, and get a stranglehold upon the natural resources around them. Still there must be progress, expansion, progress, expansion, free competition. All very well. But you can’t progress upwards if another great tree has risen and sent out branches above you. You can’t expand if your neighbour takes up all the room. You can’t compete once your ‘brother’ has got a stranglehold on you.
Then you’ve either got to give in, and gradually, gradually have the light of day taken from you. Or you have to fight.
Sooner or later war is bound to come. If we continue in our ideal of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity; liberty for every man and every nation to get as much as he can for himself, equality of opportunity for every sharp and unscrupulous man or nation to get the better of the more honest or less shrewd man or nation, then there is bound to come more war, many more wars.
We all know it. We none of us believe in our ideals any more. Our ideal, our leading ideas, our growing tip were shot away in the Great War.
Till the Great War, we believed in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and in the Voice of the People. The best men and women believed that the poorer classes were simple and honourable, and that when the Voice of the People was heard, it would speak simple, but wise and decent things, free from the falsities of the educated upper classes.
Came the War. And what then? What sort of sound did the Voice of the People make?
Before we answer, let us realise at once that the Voice of the People can never actually be heard. If every man got up to say his say in his own voice, there would come a great hoarse hollow bellowing of utter confusion. A number of people is heard, and can only be heard, intelligibly, through’ a spokesman.
So that if we want to hear the Voice of the People, we must listen to the spokesmen of the People. And by the People we mean the vast majority, people of every class. Each class has its wiser minority, with its particular spokesmen. But the vast majority rules in a time of crisis, and puts its spokesmen emphatically forward, as the mass takes fright.
And look at these spokesmen, in every nation. Listen to them. The two great voices in England, during the thick of the War were those of Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Horatio Bottomley. These two spoke the Voice of the People: in trumpet blasts. They said what the vast majority were choking to say. They said it all enormously, endlessly, and with complete success.
There is hardly an Englishman living who can bear to remember the voices of these two gentlemen when they were uplifted in full blast. Or, if he remembers, can remember without shame.
Why? — Because they said things that were not true, and because they urged us to actions that were meaner, smaller, baser, crueller than our own deep feelings.
And this was the Voice of the People. Let us hope never to hear it again in full blast, the Voice of the Herd.
Every man has two selves among his manifold Self. He has a herd-self, which is vulgar, common, ugly, like the voice of the man in the crowd. And he has a better self, which is quiet, and slow, and which is most of the time puzzled. From his better self, he is almost dumb. From his herd-self, he shouts and yells and rants.
So in the middle of the War, we heard the Voice of the People bullying us. What became of Liberty? No man had any. Every able-bodied man was turned into a mere thing, without a soul of his own. The Voice of the People said the War required it. So every man was turned into an automaton, and the man who has been turned into a mere thing, without a soul of his own, is not going to believe in Liberty again, in a hurry, or to want to listen to the Voice of the People any more.
And Equality? What became of that? When any honest man was spied upon and thrown at the mercy of some ranting ‘patriotic’ bully to be insulted and maltreated.
And Fraternity, when men were inventing more and more fiendish devices to destroy and cripple one another. Equality of opportunity to throw poison in other men’s faces. Free competition in injuring one another, body and soul.
No, the old ideal, the old leading tip was shot to smithereens, and we have got no new one. Nothing really to believe in. Only now, having lost our belief, we know inwardly that it would have been better to lose a war. Men cannot live long without a belief.
Comes ‘after the War’. The world after the War.
We thought the old times were coming back. They can never come. We know now that each one of us had something shot out of him. So we have to adjust ourselves to a new world.
Came ‘after the War’. England, changed inside, did not change outwardly very much. But other countries did. Russia had made one of the greatest changes in history: her Tzar and her nobles gone, her rich people dead or fled, her learned men and professors begging in the streets, only the working classes and the common soldiers left in full possession.
This was the Voice of the People with a vengeance. And Soviets, councils of workmen, ruling the country.
After all, I, who am not a workman, why should I be bullied by workmen? Because bullying is what it amounts to.
The popular philosophy of today, in every country, is the pragmatic philosophy. Which means the philosophy of ‘Common sense’. They ask the question: Is it common sense, that a rather foolish Romanov Tzar, with a few unscrupulous nobility, should hold life and death power over millions of poor people? Answer: No! Result: A revolution.
Or another question. Is it common sense that a few men just because their father or grandfather were clever men or clever rogues, should own huge properties and compel thousands of poor men to work for a miserable wage? Answer: No! Result: more revolution.
So we go on, with the philosophy of common sense.
But what it works out to, in the end, is that every man is just ‘rationed’ for the rest of his life. Every family is rationed, for food, clothing, and even house-room. That is what common sense works out to.
For rationing is common sense. But do we like it? Did we like it during the War? We didn’t. We hated it.
And since we all suffer with our teeth, wouldn’t it be common sense to have all our teeth pulled out at the age of sixteen, and false ones supplied? It might be common sense, but we just refuse to do it.
Pragmatism means that a thing is only good if it is common sense, if it works. It says that, just as an engine needs oiling and stoking, so people need food and clothing and housing, etc. Therefore, let everybody be given enough. That is, let everybody be rationed.
It may be lovely common sense, but what’s the good, when we detest it? There must be something inside us which plumps for uncommon sense. We can’t help ourselves. In the long run, we always decide from our uncommon sense, and not from our ‘common’. We begin to hate everything ‘common’, including the so-called common sense.
Man has got to be wise. And to be wise you must have far more than common sense. It is bad to have greedy, cruel people called ‘nobles’ allowed to bully simple men. It is bad to have people squandering money and taking on airs, while good men can’t find even work to do. It is very bad.
But it. is also very bad for everybody to be ‘rationed’ for life, and spied upon by a ‘police of the people’.
What sort of sense are we going to use about it? Common sense says that we are all little engines that must be stoked and watered and housed, so that we can do our share of the work and get our ration of amusement or enjoyment. And this sort of common sense points to communism, sovietism.
At the same time, something inside us hates being rationed, hates being treated as a little engine and made to do our engine’s share of work. We would almost rather die.
This is our position after the War.
Immediately after the War, socialism seemed to be the inevitable next step. Russia had taken the step. And Italy, another imaginative country, was on the verge of taking it.
Now socialism, like most things, has various sides to it. But socialism proper is the expression of two great desires in men: the first, the generous desire that all men shall eat well and sleep well and fare well all their lives: but second, the much more dangerous desire, that all existing masters shall be overthrown, and that men shall be ‘free’, which means, there shall be no authority over the people. That is socialism.
1. A desire for the welfare of all people.
2. A hatred of all masters and of all authority, a hatred of all ‘superiors’. Some socialists are full of hatred, and some are full of sincere desire for human welfare.
Now take Italy in 1919 and 1920 and 1921. She was rapidly running to socialism. Myself, personally, I believe that a good form of socialism, if it could be brought about, would be the best form of government. But let us come down to experience.
In Italy, in Florence, there was the same lingering ease and goodwill in 1919 as before the War. By 1920 prices had gone up three times, and socialism was rampant. Now we began to be bullied in every way. Servants were rude, cabmen insulted one and demanded treble fare, railway porters demanded large sums for carrying a bag from the train to the street, and threatened to attack one if the money were not paid. The train would suddenly come to a standstill in the heat of the open country: the drivers had gone on, strike for a couple of hours. Trains would arrive two hours four hours, and going from Rome to Sicily I have been twelve hours late. If in the country you asked at a cottage for a drink of wine, worth a penny, the peasant would demand a shilling, and insult you if he did not get it.
This was all pure bullying. And this was socialism. True it was the bad side of socialism, the hatred of ‘superiors’ or people with money or education or authority. But socialism it was.
Such socialism made itself enemies. And moreover, it could not trust itself. In an old civilised country like Italy, it was bound to cave in.
In the summer of 1920 I went north, and Florence was in a state of continual socialistic riot: sudden shots, sudden stones smashing into the restaurants where one was drinking coffee, all the shops suddenly barred and closed. When I came back there was a great procession of Fascisti and banners: Long Live the King. When I went to Naples, to the big main post office to send a telegram, there were white notices pasted over the doorways: ‘We, the mutilated soldiers, have turned out all the young women employed in this office, and have taken their placev No woman clerk or operator shall enter this office etc.’ — But the mutilated soldiers did not know how to send telegrams. So I had to look for a little side street office.
This was the beginning of Fascism. It was an anti-socialist movement started by the returned soldiers in the name of Law and Order. And suddenly, it gained possession of Italy. Now the cabs had a fixed charge, a fixed charge for railway porters was placarded in the railway stations, and trains began to run punctually. But also, in Fiesole near Florence the Fascisti suddenly banged at the door of the mayor of the village, in the night when all were in bed.
The mayor was forced to get up and open the door. The Fascisti seized him, stood him against the wall of his house, and shot him under the eyes of his wife and children, who were in their night dresses. Why? Because he was a socialist.
That is Fascism and Law and Order. Only another kind of bullying.
Now one must have Law and Order, because lawlessness and disorder in our great communities is hell. We must have authority, and there must be power. But there must not be bullying, nor the worship of mere Force. A certain group of men in Italy intend to force their will on all other men. Earlier, socialists tried to force their will. In Russia, the Communists succeed in forcing their will.
The forcing of one man’s will over another man is bullying. We know what it is, we experienced it during the War. It is a bad, degrading thing. It degrades both the bully and those who are bullied.
Yet there must be power. Power there must be. Because, if there is not power there will be force.
What is the difference, among human beings, between power and force. A man invested with power has a profound responsibility. Force is irresponsible, unless controlled by the higher power.
The men in power, in England today, are the Members of Parliament and, chiefly, the Cabinet Ministers. The Force of the country is in the police and the army. But both the police and the army are only tools and instruments in the hands of the higher power, invested in Parliament.
In the old days, heaven was supposed to have given the gift of power to some few noble families. The family specially endowed with power from God was royal. A king was not a mere bully and tyrant. His kingship was not a matter of vanity and conceit. He really felt that heaven had made him responsible for a whole nation. It was a sacred charge. And many kings really did try to answer to God for their deeds as representatives of the nation, just as fathers answer for their families. But then heaven, or nature, has really made a father responsible for his young family. Whereas, once the royal family was established, nature had no more part in making a king. An individual became a king automatically, because he was born of a certain family. And these automatic hereditary kings could at last act as ignobly, towards their nation, as the ex-Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany has now acted.
Therefore in the cry for Liberty, men have refused to recognise any gift of power from heaven. Power, nowadays, is supposed to lie in the hands of the ‘majority’, the vast mass of the people. And these people by electing a man to be their responsible leader, can confer power on him. It is just the reverse of the old idea. In the royal days, God was a God of Power. He gave some of his power to the King. And the King revealed it to the humble mass of the nation. Today we say that power lies only in the great collective Will of the People, and they hand on this power to a group of men who are thus placed in power, but who are responsible to the People all the time.
Which is better? a royal king who is automatically royal by birth, and who is responsible to God alone? Or a vast mass of people electing a group of men to assume responsibility, and by the mere fact of election, automatically investing these men with power?
What is automatic, in human affairs, is bad. And power, true natural power, does come from God. That is, it is either born inside a man, or nothing can give it him. The son of a great king and hero may be a poor weakling: that we well know. But also, the man elected by fifty million people to be their leader may just as well be a poor weakling. The fact that fifty million people say he is great, will not make him great. You will never get great men by election, unless people are seeking after greatness. If the majority are, as today, seeking some special material advantage, like the raising of wages or the reduction of taxes, then they will elect some tool for their own purposes, and a mere tool he will be, without a spark of true power.
So that we see, democracy, government by popular election of representatives, becomes even more dismal than government by kings. Kings are at least supposed to be descendants of heroes, and they at least keep up a bluff of royalty and nobleness: as the late Kaiser did so successfully. But our Prime Ministers are forced, obviously, to be the servants of a huge discontented mob, who all want more money and less work. Till democracy becomes a thing of shame.
And meanwhile, there is one mysterious Force which is under no control. A mysterious force, like a great Secret Society spreading through all nations and controlled by no nation. This is the Force of Finance. A few hundred men on the face of the earth, with huge sums of money behind them, exert their wills and minds in order that money shall and must go on producing money, no matter what lives or loss of honour it may cost. Here is a great irresponsible Force which has escaped from the control of true human power, and which is likely to work enormous evil.
Now we begin to understand the old motto, Noblesse Oblige. Noblesse means, having the gift of power, the natural or sacred power. And having such power obliges a man to act with fearlessness and generosity, responsible for his acts to God. A noble is one who may be known before all men.
And even the automatic, hereditary nobility were born with this advantage: because of their birth they were expected to be brave, generous, and according to their station, wise. What a man is expected to be he will more or less try to be. So that in hereditary nobility there were great advantages. But even there all is decayed. A nobleman by birth is no longer expected to be braver than other men, an example to men. He is only expected to be conceited or snobbish.
Then aristocracy becomes so hollow, mere snobbish conceit and bluff, as in the ex-Kaiser’s case, then it has to be swept away.
This does not automatically sweep away all aristocracy.! There is an aristocracy inside the souls of some men, and that you can never sweep away. And Noblesse Oblige will ring out as a challenge for ever.
Which brings us back to common sense. Hereditary nobility is not common sense, and it is a fiasco. Democracy and government by Parliament is, in a way, good common sense: letting the mass of the people indicate what they want, and providing the chance to get it. But when what they want is never anything but more wages and less taxes, then common sense begins to stink in our nostrils.
Some men must be noble, or life is an ash-heap. There is natural nobility, given by God or the Unknown, and far beyond common sense. And towards this natural nobility we must live.
The simple man, whose best self, his noble self, if nearly all the time puzzled, dumb, and helpless, has still the power to recognise the man in whom the noble self is powerful and articulate. To this man he must pledge himself. That is the only way. To act according to the spark of nobility we have in us, not according to our greediness and our cowardice, our hard selves.
The hereditary aristocratic class has fallen into disuse. And democracy means the electing of tools to serve the fears and the material desires of the masses. Noblesse n’oblige plus.
This is really the worst that can happen to mankind, when Noblesse n’oblige plus. Goodness and badness there is bound to be. But a spark of nobility redeems everything.
For this reason we cannot help preferring Tzarist Russia to Soviet Russia. The tsar’s Russia, with all the crimes laid at its door, and with all its ignoble nobles, had at least some lingering appearance of the old inspiration of noblesse oblige. Russia’s was always a wild strange noblesse. But it had its splendours and its consolations.
Whereas about Soviet Russia we can only feel that Malice Oblige or Misere Oblige. And one cannot live all the time towards poorness or common sense. It wastes the spirit out of a man. We must live with some natural pulsing nobleness.
And again, one feels that Soviet Russia is probably only the temporary grave of the old, not-quite-real Tsarist Russia. In this grave the great nation must stay, for the three days. Then there will be a resurrection towards a new nobility, the true or natural nobility of the people.
This is our job, then, our uncommon sense: to recognize the spark of nobleness inside us, and let it make us. To recognize the spark of nobleness in one another, and add our sparks together to a flame. And to recognize the men who have stars, not mere sparks of nobility in their souls, and to choose these for leaders. We can choose for nobleness and we can choose bassesse. We chose Mr. Bottomley for bassesse, lowness, commoness. Nations are slowly strangeling one another in ‘competition’. The cancer of finance spreads through the body of mankind. Individuals are diseased with the same disease. To get money, and to spend money, nothing else remains. And with it goes all the strangling, and the bullying, and the degradation, the sense of humiliation and worthlessness of life, which is the bitterest of all.
There is nothing to be done, en masse. But every youth, every girl can make the great historical change inside himself and herself, to care supremely for nothing but the spark of nobleness that is in him and in her, and to follow only the leader who is a star of the new, natural noblesse.