A defense of liberty

Contents

PAGE

A PROLOGUE OF MODERN REFLECTIONS . 7

CHAPTER

II

The Child is father of the Man, and perhaps the only thing that makes us interesting is the subconscious memory of the transitional stages that have marked our personalities from youth to age. The imprint of what we were is never completely erased by what we are, and this is as true of the nation as of the indi¬ vidual. In England, even during the high flood of the industrial plutocracy, during the Victo¬ rian days when its excellence as a system was unquestioned, and when it stood for the con¬ summation of civilization and progress, the older phases of political and social thought still lingered in the by-ways of national life and shaded the fierce sunlight of that modernity. Any ideal that has once definitely permeated society remains for ever an ingredient of its social life. Those who know England well and understand her historical personality can easily detect to-day the traces of the feudal system, of the Catholic Church, of the Puritans, and naturally of the recently disinherited landed aristocracy, influences that have softened the supremacy of the industrial plutocracy, and that have made its pretensions to permanent superiority more absurd and less irksome. England is full of people still believing in and still trying to live according to old systems long discarded by the majority. This not only makes for tolerance ; it has the more important effect of rendering uneasy on their temporary thrones the powers that be, but may not be to-morrow.

In America it is different. The traditions that make men cynical or tender, the memories of many a creed that seemed divine, and many a system that seemed perfection, gone to seed in failure and disillusion, are there no guide to wisdom. The continuity of social effort that links Mr. Smillie not only with Wilkes but with Wat Tyler and even Simon de Montfort does not exist. Since America became a nation the industrial plutocracy has been supreme, and those who love it cannot conceive any reserva¬ tion to or hesitation in their belief, and those who hate it detest it with untempered zeal. To them industrial plutocracy is not a phase, a temporary phenomenon in the march of human history. 44 Business ’’has taken complete possession of the soul of the people in a way that is almost inconceivable to the more illogical and much lazier English. Business is the sole occupation of the nation, and so absorbed in it are they that it has altered in a peculiar way their social problems and political outlook. In America the rich are not idle ; they do not even want to be idle. That accusation of idleness so familiar to us in political argument, so fundamental in its indication of what we are and what we wish to be, cannot be made by the American poor against the xAmerican rich. We who work to live, whose main effort is towards escape from toil into a life of ample leisure, whose main quarrel with the rich is not that they have too much of these things, but that we have too little, can hardly conceive a plutocracy in which the plutocrats do not desire leisure, and live laborious days because they love them.

This genuine love of work is characteristic of all classes of the community. The familiar sight of the wives of rich Americans travelling luxuriously in Europe without their husbands has given rise to a legend amongst us that the American business man is a henpecked slave, toiling year in, year out, to provide the pleasures of his female relations. It is an illusion. The truth is that nothing will induce the business man to leave his business. He is bored to death in Europe, and he cannot believe that any pleasure his wife obtains from spending his income comes within a thousand miles of the pleasure that he obtains from making it. His holiday and his sport are no real delight to him ; they are not, as they are with us, the eagerly anticipated and greedily enjoyed emblems of real existence. On the contrary, they are to him merely a medicine, necessary, like food and sleep, to keep him fit for the business life. I know a rich man over seventy years old, the possessor of four houses, a yacht, and eight motors, who can hardly be forced to take a fortnight’s holiday in the year. He cannot be persuaded to eat a good lunch five minutes’ walk from his office, because he can save time by eating a bad one in his own street. And every summer morning at eight o’clock his yacht, to us the symbol of expensive pleasure, joins the crowd of other rich yachtsmen on the waterways that lead to the city of New York. This adoration of the strenuous life would seem fantastic both to rich and poor in England. Yet we must not rashly assume that it is derived from mere love of money. On the contrary, love of money, safely invested money, is far more prevalent in England. It is the absorbing fascination of the game, the splendid results to be obtained from his endeavour in that wide undeveloped country that calls the rich man to his office in the sweltering summer days. And in America the same spirit permeates the poor. The agitation for shorter hours is not in America bound up with the hatred of intolerable toil, or the desire for leisure and recreation, it is merely a wish to lessen the number of hours before which overtime pay comes into operation, and is in reality an offshoot of the agitation for higher wages. The whole nation is united in the enjoyment of its effort to extract wealth, and the power that wealth brings, from life, and from that novel angle they view the social problems of the age.

Idleness being ruled out, the discussion between those who work with their brains and those who work with their hands is almost entirely concerned with relative reward. Liberal thinkers belonging to the educated classes are willing to surrender several positions of the capitalist case. They agree that the element of luck, whether it takes the form of inheritance or of speculation, cannot be defended. But they maintain that real brains, genuine business ability is a rare gift, and can never be on an absolute level with manual labour. The man who develops a country, who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before, who has the quality of inspiration and the capacity to organize, deserves a higher reward than do the mere instruments that carry out his ideas. The manual workers agree that this is so, but that the brain-worker’s reward is dispropor¬ tionate. The brain-worker replies that only a disproportionate reward is sufficient to make an incentive. These are the higher levels of social science, and the argument deteriorates in practice into angry disputes concerning the size of the wage-bill that a particular business will carry, and whether men who insist on taking most of the profits can justly refuse to share the losses. The acerbity of the quarrel is some¬ what increased by the fact that the modern Government, however radical and advanced, is financially dependent on the class from whom all taxes are drawn. So among ordinary men the ancient struggle for the golden eggs con¬ tinues ; while, above them, some say that the indispensable goose is very sick and may die, and others say that the goose is not indispensable, and that it doesn’t matter whether it dies or not.

The ratio of reward that will be just to the brain-worker and that will form an incentive to his endeavour may seem to us a point of difference too minute to justify the hurling of the smallest bomb. Our own problems are so infinitely complicated by the deep lines of ancient class distinction, by the habits and traditions of a society that knows better how to play than how to wTork. Yet on the whole the danger of social disruption seems greater in America than in England. We are always ready for the inevitable compromise, perhaps because we do not feel so strongly, and because we have from old experience no very great belief either that the present system is so bad as it is painted, or that any new one will produce the millennium. The classes may be very distinct in England, but they understand each other well, and the traditions that bind them together are stronger than the problems that divide them. But in the American melting-pot the temperature is always at boiling-point* The melting-pot is in reality too intimate a simile for so volcanic a social experiment. The energy and vitality of a people that has no social or political memories naturally tends to violent explosions. Both rich and poor are sure that they are right — sure with a certainty and with an uncompromising determination that the English have never felt, and that their easy-going, sceptical temperament is incapable of feeling. Super¬ ficially the rich in America have a better case than they have in England. They are more useful, more efficient, and they appear to fill a necessary function in the scheme of modern civilization. But they are not so human or so kindly. They live lives far more selfish and detached. And they look upon the poor, not as those whom we have always with us, but merely as those who have failed. Hence the hatred they excite is far deeper than it is with us. Human beings do not relish the feeling that it is their own stupidity that has kept them poor, and they take refuge in the belief that the rich man must have cheated, that certain qualities of trickery and cunning are the foundations of prosperity. And indeed it may be so. But it is curious to find that the more the rich man justifies his existence by his industry the more intolerable he becomes to the poor.

Ill

As Hamlet noticed, there is something very discouraging about mankind. The world is quite satisfactory as long as you merely live in it and enjoy yourself when you can. But if you have ideas about it, if you are born to set it right as Mr. Wells is, if you can’t bear it to be untidy, to be permanently muddled and immoral, then Job himself could more easily be comforted. I do not object so much to the obtuseness of my companions in this battered caravanserai ; that defect can in some moods be twisted into a convenient and flattering foil to my own superior vision. And in any case, in more modest moments, it is natural that they should not know why we are here and where we are going or ought to go, since even I myself have no idea what is the answer to these conundrums. No, it is not their obtuseness, it is their, slackness, their lack of interest in general questions, their inability to maintain their intermittent enthusiasms that drives one to despair. It is true that the intel¬ lectuals are often wrong, but the faith, the vital energy that moves them would, if all men could be fashioned so, solve most of the problems that trouble these tiresome times. It is natural that people should be selfish, but they seem to be unable even to harness their own selfishness for any useful purpose, and the powerful force of enlightened self-interest is lost because it is never sustained for any length of time.

It is possible that democracy may be a failure. Certainly it is not a final form. In feudal times there were weak kings. Men who lacked energy, determination, and force of character, men who loved pleasure and wasted their vitality on wine and women and song, sat doggedly on their thrones and hung up the progress of mankind. But there were also strong kings, who hustled and struggled and got things done. Democracy, on the other hand, is always weak. Its essence is the idea of “ majority ” rule, and the majority of mankind, although just as likely to be right as wrong in their beliefs and desires, are always certain to be indifferent and unstable. It is not neces¬ sary to be Aristotle to know that the first axiom of Politics is that those who have the power must do the governing themselves, and not be led by the nose. Yet Philip II in the grip of the Inquisition and Louis XV in the arms of Madame de Pompadour were free agents com¬ pared with the secret bondage in which Democ¬ racy is fettered. Like any dissipated king, the people toy with their mistresses and forget the duties of their high estate ; but those who lead them by the nose have deteriorated in type, from Cardinal Richelieu to Mr. Bottomley. The feeble king, too, was aware that he had delegated his authority into hands stronger than his own. But the Democracy is merely deceived ; it has the illusion of authority, and is not conscious of the secret cunning of the usurper.

There is, of course, nothing to be said for the discarded monarchical form of Government.

It is a sign of helpless pessimism to be senti¬ mental about the past, to lay inordinate stress upon the merits of dead ideas and to forget the faults that made them obsolete. But the past throws up just as dangerous a mirage before the eyes of those who hate it as of those who love it, and much of the blind adoration of the present is derived from too constantly making a favourable comparison with the past. Those who have fought for Democracy, who are accustomed to look back to the traditional forms of thought as the enemies of their cause, cannot be blamed for their blind belief in the purity of what they have obtained. But this setting up of our attained ambitions as if they were the ark of the covenant is a form of vanity which delays the progress of mankind. We have to make up our minds that though whatever we have done may be good and a thousand times worth doing, it is only a step forward leading to the next, and that any attempt of ours to prove it the summit of the mountain will be but a hindrance to those that climb.

The Greek philosophers placed Politics on the same plane as Ethics. Surely that sentence alone should be enough to rouse our Democracy from its lethargic optimism. Granted that Spanish priests and Roman priests did in the past organize the ritual of belief into a corrupt system that made necessary the Reformation, yet never in history has Ethics reached so low an ebb in the minds of men as Politics has to-day. In America high-minded men of the educated classes, with rare exceptions, refuse to touch politics and maintain that no honest man can make it his profession. Business and trade, hardly one would have thought temples of purity, at any rate give a man the choice between good and evil. In American politics there is no such choice, and men use the phrase “ a mere politician ” with the same contempt as they would about a thief. The game is thus left in the hands of those who are not ashamed to play it. A difficult but dirty game, requiring certain qualities of low cunning, audacity, unscrupulousness, and hypocrisy. They are out for themselves, these men ; they control the machine ; and behind them is the influence of all that is most selfish and cynically materialistic in the community.

The party system in America, pretending to be the genuine expression of alternative ideals, merely gives the people an illusion of choice between two evils. Both parties are organized gangs, made up of men of low character thor¬ oughly conversant with the power that such organization gives for the attainment of wealth and position. The tongue and the pen are the cog-wheels of the machine. A masterly camou¬ flage of spoken morality is daubed over the grim reality of corruption. Side by side with this misuse of speech they wield the skilful propaganda of the press. The vast pretence of independent opinion ; the one ventriloquist voice hidden in a babel of calculated noise ; the elaborate suppression of facts and doctoring of news to suit a secret policy ; the impressive and dictatorial tone of wisdom assumed by the anonymous ; has been created under the shadow of that ancient battle-cry “ the freedom of the Press.”

Within the shelter of these devices the power given by Democracy is used for certain definite objects. Speaking broadly, we may say that those who are anxious to get rich are as a rule in league with those who are anxious to remain rich to deceive the rest of the population. But some slight difference of opinion as to the best method of performing the operation of getting rich still divides the political world into two parties. One party of politicians thinks it is best to cling to the financiers, to assist big business, to fight trade wars, to manipulate tariffs and keep labour cheap, because in the process they can pick up the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table. The other party of politicians thinks it more profitable to flatter the poor with the promise of radical reforms and to assist by every means the socialistic tendencies of the time, because every step towards

State ownership, every increase in complicated taxation, every law that interferes with the liberty of the individual, brings with it lucrative bureaucratic jobs, comfortable salaried positions. According to temperament some men prefer the latter party because it brings power as well as wealth, and eliminates the middleman finan¬ cier. Others prefer the former party because it is easier and safer to let the middleman financier do the work and incur the hatred. But both parties are aware of the game they are playing, and are agreed that it must never be exposed.

America is a more Conservative country than England, and the processes we have been studying are correspondingly more evident. But English democracy has progressed suffic¬ iently far in its journey towards Conservative organization to enable it to discover in its own body politic the destructive germs of the same disease. The deterioration in the type of politician, and the refusal of decent men to enter political life ; the base uses to which the press and the platform have been put ; the revival of the desire for tariffs and the enormous increase in the staff of the bureaucracy ; are evident signs of democratic corruption. When we are once aware of the tricks that are being played upon us, and for what material gains our ideals of government are being used, it should not be difficult to cut away the poisoned growth. But we sleep, as an elm sleeps, with the ivy round its trunk.

IY

Humanity observed from the height of the Woolworth Building, the highest office building in the world, more than retains its hackneyed resemblance to an ant-heap. Mr. Woolworth himself was a typical product of America, a country of extremes and superlatives. He made a large fortune out of selling things at the fixed price of sixpence, and his sixty-storied building is at once the pride and the advertisement of his career. From the time of the Pyramids such men have asked us to look upon their works with despair, and always this particular form of vanity, far from magnifying the great¬ ness of man, has only increased the impression of his impotence. Looking down on the builders of this fantastic but beautiful city of New York they seem puny insects enough, rushing hither and thither for no obvious purpose, their white straw hats shining under the hot sun. A hustling confusion always seems to be going on in the ant-heap, and the serene observer finds himself asking the unanswerable and ancient questions : Is there a purpose behind this confusion ? Are they moved by reason or by instinct ? Are they working for results, and if so, are the results they are working for worth having ?

And when we descend from the observatory we find their confusion is indeed genuine— a confusion both of effort and mind. They cannot even decide whether Mr. Woolworth himself was admirable or detestable. A thousand unsolved social problems cluster round the person and career of Mr. Woolworth. He was the product of capitalism, of course ; no social¬ istic state with its lack of incentive could have produced him or his ideas. But then was he worth producing, and do we want his ideas ? He started from the bottom of the industrial ladder, failed, and was ruined several times. He worked very hard ; he was no idle dabbler in high finance, born in the capitalist purple. And he claimed to be providing people with things they really wanted for the absurd sum of ten cents. But do we want his articles ? Or do we only buy them because his expensive system of advertisement tells us we do ? And behind this self-made man lie all the ramifica¬ tions of the industrial system. Questions of wages and the right to work ; questions of hours and the right to have leisure ; all the poverty and misery of the submerged cling about the cloven foot of Mr. Woolworth as he rises to the prosperous surface of the social system. Yet we cannot be sure that we can get on without Mr. Woolworth, however much we should like to get on without him. We cannot be sure that the State will think it worth while to provide us with little articles for ten cents. And even if it does, will not those bored bureaucrats on fixed salaries muddle away the profit that Mr. Woolworth used to make ? That glittering fortune of his, that seemed so large to him and to us, what will become of it, and how far will it go, if we alter the system by which he made it, and by which we too are so desperately trying to imitate him ? We cannot be sure that the bureaucrats will be efficient or honest enough to let it come to us in wages, or, if they are, that the fortune is large enough to make a noticeable difference to those wages. The State may calmly announce that the little articles will be twenty cents in future, and then we shall require more wages to buy them. And then there is the Tower. For, like children, we are just as proud of the Tower as ever Mr. Woolworth was. We know that it would be a sad world if nobody built towers in it. It is a foolish Tower ; no State would dream of erecting such a thing. But the straw-hatted ants would miss it if it were not there.

We are in a fog in these days ; it is the keynote of our century, but so uniform is its density that the majority imagine it to be the daylight. Some of us who were born amid the regulated certainties of the reign of Queen Victoria are more quick to feel the miasma of the atmosphere. Most writers and thinkers are aware of this mist of the mind, are aware that they cannot see a yard in front of their noses, but they are full of a Shavian confidence that they can find the way home. Mr. Wells alone in Tono Bungay and The New Machiavelli has drawn the fogginess of the age, but latterly even he has lit up his little lantern and asked us to follow on. And we are reluctant to follow anybody ; we only stand in little groups at the cross-roads and argue whether to turn to the right or the left.

Mr. Woolworth is asked to prove that he is admirable and he cannot do it. It is far easier for us to prove that he is detestable. But we have to prove more than that. We have to prove that he is more detestable than the gentle¬ man we are going to put in his place. He failed so often. Can the element of risk be eliminated ? Is it a good thing that it should be ? Will the State ever take a risk ? It would be interesting to know whether Mr. Arnold Bennett believes that a State publisher would have ever printed The Pretty Lady , or whether the Editor of the Manchester Guardian believes that a State Press would ever print articles that advocated

Anarchy. We want to be sure that the ground is firm on which we are asked to walk. We want to know whether there are any unchangeable laws that govern politics and economics.

Two concrete problems, one political and the other economic, have lately been disturbing the minds of the American people. The political one is the question of Prohibition. Let us at once count out of the controversy the obvious and ignoble elements on both sides — that is to say, the vicious who love to drink and the virtuous who love to deprive people of pleasures that they are not tempted by themselves. Neither of these types has decided or really influenced the question of Prohibition. It is a far deeper and more subtle division of opinion. One side say that alcohol is a poison that not only destroys the individual and damages the health of his children, but also vitally affects the efficiency of the community. Millionaires and Socialists are found at one on this point. Irrefutable figures have been produced to prove that Monday is a day’s work lost to the community, and that 30 per cent, increase of output will be the result of Prohibition. Business men calculate that a country adopting Prohibition will inevitably defeat in commerce and trade a country that does not. The other side admit every word of this, but maintain that only in excess is alcohol a danger, that people can be educated to moderation ; and that any attempt to prohibit its use is a gross interference with personal liberty. We must be careful before we dismiss that plea for personal liberty. Many a dis¬ credited and intolerable form of Government has ignored it for reasons of expediency and profit. One of the counts against Prussia itself was that it placed the efficiency of the State before every other human motive. We have gone already far in the curtailment of personal liberty. It may be true that this is only one more step, but how far are we to go ? Shall the State tell us whom we are to marry and how many children we are to have ? We want the fog cleared away, definite laws discovered and laid down.

The economic problem is concerned with the taking over by the State of the railway system during the war. The story is a simple one. To obtain unity of control and to obviate compe¬ tition the State took over the railways during the war. The business men, probably correctly enough, were considered unable to dispossess themselves, for national purposes, of their habit of working for dividends, and the management was placed entirely in the hands of the bureau¬ cracy at Washington. The bureaucracy, concen¬ trating on the war, found itself at loggerheads with the railway union. Its position was a particularly weak one, for it not only was handicapped by its desire to win the war, but also by its political disinclination to alienate votes. It therefore gave way at once to every demand for higher wages and shorter hours. The result being that, at the end of the war, not only were these magnificent properties not earning dividends, but they were in many cases being run at an actual loss. The problem was complicated by several other factors. The bonds of American railway companies are very widely held as investments for the savings of compara¬ tively poor people all over the United States, The higher wages made it absolutely necessary to put up the cost of freights, which is always reflected in every other business, and puts up the cost of living to the rest of the population. The shorter hours made it necessary to employ more men on the railways, which increased the labour shortage in other industries and decreased the general output of the country.

Faced with these difficulties the State has decided to hand back the railways to the com¬ panies. But the problem remains. One side consider it to be a conclusive argument against State-ownership. The other side maintain that a state of war is no fair time to test such an experiment. Once again we want the fog cleared away, definite laws discovered and laid down.

So men stand at the cross-roads arguing in the fog, much to the annoyance of those who have lanterns and wish us to follow their lead in one direction or another. The Ameri¬ cans are a cautious nation, and they do not care much for social experiment. They have attempted very little municipal trading, and very few general services are in the hands of the State, because they are not convinced that socialized industry run by their corrupt poli¬ ticians will be an improvement on capitalism. They have been convinced that Prohibition will be a success, and they have adopted it completely and without compensation. The English are not like that. They enjoy social experiment, but are quite ready to pay the vested interest for the right to make it. They hate to leap to a logical conclusion, and they are hardly ever absolutely convinced about anything. They always like to retain as many of the old bottles as will consent to be filled with the new wine. But though nations may differ in temperament as England and America do, all modern communities are afraid of chaos. It is not the atrocities but the economic failure of the Bolsheviks that counts against them. Civilization in the West is so advanced now that even the worst-off amongst us has got some¬ thing to lose. It is easy enough to boil us up into a hatred of Mr. Woolworth, but you have got to prove to us that Mr. Tadpole and Mr. Taper will be able to build us that wonderful Tower.