Joan and Peter: The story of an education

by H. G. Wells

§ 8

We underrate the disposition of youth to think for itself.

Oswald set himself to deliver this Valediction of his after dinner on Friday evening....

Joan was hesitating between a game of Demon Patience with Peter—in which she always played thirteen to his eleven and usually won in spite of the handicap—and an inclination for Bach’s Passacaglia upon the pianola in the study. Peter expressed himself ready for whatever she chose; he would play D.P. or read Moll Flanders—he had just discovered the delight of that greatest of all eighteenth century novels. He was sitting on the couch in the library and Joan was standing upon the hearthrug, regarding him thoughtfully, when Oswald came in. He stopped to hear what Peter was saying, with his one eye intent on Joan’s pretty gravity.

“No,” he interrupted. “This is my evening.

“You see,” he said, coming up to the fire; “I want to talk to you young people. I want to know some things—— I want to know what you make of life.... I want ... an exchange of views.”

He stood with his back to the fire and smiled at Joan’s grave face close to his own. “I’ve got to talk to you,” he said, “very seriously. It’s necessary.”

Having paralysed them by this preface he sat down in his deep armchair, pulled it an inch or so towards the fire, and leaning forward, with his eye on the spitting coals, began.

“I wish I could talk better, Joan and Peter.... I know I’ve never been a good talker—it’s been rather a loss between us all. And now particularly.... I want to talk.... You must let me get it out in my own way....

“You see,” he went on after a moment or so to rally his forces, “I’ve been your guardian, I’ve had your education and your affairs in my hands, for fifteen years. So far as the affairs go, Sycamore, you know—— We won’t go into that. That’s all plain sailing. But it’s the education I want to talk about—and your future. You are now both of age. Well past. You’re on the verge of twenty-five, Peter—in a month or so. You’re both off now—housekeeping. You’re dropping the pilot. It’s high time, I suppose....”

Joan glanced at Peter, and then sank noiselessly into a crouching attitude close to Oswald’s knee. He paused to stroke her hair.

“I’ve been trying to get you all that I could get you.... Education.... I’ve had to blunder and experiment. I ought to tell you what I’ve aimed at and what I’ve done, take stock with you of the world I’ve educated you for and the part you’re going to play in it. Take stock.... It’s been a badly planned undertaking, I know. But then it’s such a surprising and unexpected world. All the time I’ve been learning, and most things I’ve learnt more or less too late to use the knowledge properly....”

He paused.

Peter looked at his guardian and said nothing. Oswald patted the head at his knee in return for a caress. It was an evasive, even apologetic pat, for he did not want to be distracted by affection just then.

“This war has altered the whole world,” he went on. “Life has become stark and intense, and when I took this on—when I took up the task of educating you—our world here seemed the most wrapped up and comfortable and secure world you can possibly imagine. Comfortable to the pitch of stuffiness. Most English people didn’t trouble a bit about the shape of human life; they thought it was—well, rather like a heap of down cushions. For them it was. For most of Europe and America.... They thought it was all right and perfectly safe—if only you didn’t bother. And education had lost its way. Yes. That puts the case. Education had lost its way.”

Oswald paused again. He fixed his one eye firmly on a glowing cavity in the fire, as though that contained the very gist of his thoughts.

“What is education up to?” he asked. “What is education?”...

Thereupon of course he ought to have gone on to the passage beginning, “Consider this beast we are, this thing man!” as he had already rehearsed it overnight. But Peter had not learnt his part properly.

“I suppose it’s fitting the square natural man into the round hole of civilized life,” Peter threw out.

This reply greatly disconcerted Oswald. “Exactly,” he said, and was for some moments at a loss.

“Yes,” he said, rallying. “But what is civilized life?”

“Oh!... Creative activities in an atmosphere of helpful goodwill,” Peter tried in the brief pause that followed.

Oswald had a disagreeable feeling that he was getting to the end of his discourse before he delivered its beginning. “Yes,” he said again. “Yes. But for that you must have a political form.”

“The World State,” said Peter.

“The League of Free Nations,” said Oswald, “to enforce Peace throughout the earth.”

The next remark that came from Peter was still more unexpected and embarrassing.

“Peace is nothing,” said Peter.

Oswald turned his red eye upon his ward, in profound amazement.

Did they differ fundamentally in their idea of the human future?

“Peace, my dear Peter, is everything,” he protested.

“But, sir, it’s nothing more than the absence of war. It’s a negative. In itself it’s—vacuum. You can’t live in a vacuum.”

“But I mean an active peace.”

“That would be something more than peace. War is an activity. Peace is not. If you take war out of the world, you must have some other activity.”

“But doesn’t the organization of the World Peace in itself constitute an activity?”

“That would be a diminishing activity, sir. Like a man getting himself morphia and taking it and going to sleep. A World Peace would release energy, and as the energy was released, if the end were merely peace, there would be less need for it. Until things exploded.”

Great portions of Oswald’s Valediction broke away and vanished for ever into the limbo of unspoken discourses.

“But would you have war go on, Peter?”

“Not in its present form. But struggle and unification, which is the end sought in all struggles, must go on in some form, sir,” said Peter, “while life goes on. We have to get the World State and put an end to war. I agree. But the real question is what are you going to do with our Peace? What struggle is to take the place of war? What is mankind going to do? Most wars have come about hitherto because somebody was bored. Do you remember how bored we all were in 1914? And the rotten way we were all going on then? A World State or a League of Nations with nothing to do but to keep the peace will bore men intolerably.... That’s what I like about the Germans.”

“What you like about the Germans!” Oswald cried in horror.

“They did get a move on, sir,” said Peter.

“We don’t want a preventive League of Nations,” Peter expanded. “It’s got to be creative or nothing. Or else we shall be in a sort of perpetual Coronation year—with nothing doing on account of the processions. Horrible!”

For a little while Oswald made no reply. He could not recall a single sentence of the lost Valediction that was at all appropriate here, and he was put out and distressed beyond measure that Peter could find anything to “like” about the Germans.

“A World Peace for its own sake is impossible,” Peter went on. “The Old Experimenter would certainly put a spoke into that wheel.”

“Who is the Old Experimenter?” asked Oswald.

“He’s a sort of God I have,” said Peter. “Something between theology and a fairy tale. I dreamt about him. When I was delirious. He doesn’t rule the world or anything of that sort, because he doesn’t want to, but he keeps on dropping new things into it. To see what happens. Like a man setting himself problems to work out in his head. He lives in a little out-of-the-way office. That’s the idea.”

“You haven’t told me about him,” said Joan.

“I shall some day,” said Peter. “When I feel so disposed....”

“This is very disconcerting,” said Oswald, much perplexed. He scowled at the fire before him. “But you do realize the need there is for some form of world state and some ending of war? Unless mankind is to destroy itself altogether.”

“Certainly, sir,” said Peter. “But we aren’t going to do that on a peace proposition simply. It’s got to be a positive proposal. You know, sir——”

“I wish you’d call me Nobby,” said Oswald.

“It’s a vice contracted in the army, this Sir-ing,” said Peter. “It’s Nobby in my mind, anyhow. But you see, I’ve got a kind of habit, at night and odd times, of thinking over my little misadventure with that balloon and my scrap with von Papen. They are my stock dreams, with extra details worked in, nasty details some of them ... and then I wake up and think about them. I think over the parachute affair more than the fight, because it lasted longer and I wasn’t so active. I felt it more. Especially being shot in the legs.... That sort of dream when you float helpless.... But the thing that impresses me most in reflecting on those little experiences is the limitless amount of intelligence that expended itself on such jobs as breaking my wrist, splintering my shoulder-blade and smashing up my leg. The amount of ingenuity and good workmanship in my instruments and the fittings of my basket, for example, was extraordinary, having regard to the fact that it was just one small item in an artillery system for blowing Germans to red rags. And the stuff and intelligence they were putting up against me, that too was wonderful; the way the whole problem had been thought out, the special clock fuse and so on. Well, my point is that the chap who made that equipment wasn’t particularly interested in killing me, and that the chaps who made my outfit weren’t particularly keen on the slaughter of Germans. But they had nothing else to do. They were brought up in a pointless world. They were caught by a vulgar quarrel. What did they care for the Kaiser? Old ass! What they were interested in was making the things....”

Peter became very earnest in his manner. “No peace, as we have known peace hitherto, offers such opportunities for good inventive work as war does. That’s my point, Nobby. There’s no comparison between the excitement and the endless problems of making a real, live, efficient submarine, for example, that has to meet and escape the intensest risks, and the occupation of designing a great, big, safe, upholstered liner in which fat swindlers can cross the Atlantic without being seasick. War tempts imaginative, restless people, and a stagnant peace bores them. And you’ve got to reckon with intelligence and imagination in this world, Nobby, more than anything. They aren’t strong enough to control perhaps, but they will certainly upset. Inventive, restless men are the particular instruments of my Old Experimenter. He prefers them now to plague, pestilence, famine, flood and earthquake. They are more delicate instruments. And more efficient. And they won’t stand a passive peace. Under no circumstances can you hope to induce the chap who contrived the clock fuse and the chap who worked out my gas bag or the chap with a new aeroplane gadget, and me—me, too—to stop cerebrating and making our damndest just in order to sit about safely in meadows joining up daisy chains—like a beastly lot of figures by Walter Crane. The Old Experimenter finds some mischief still for idle brains to do. He insists on it. That’s fundamental to the scheme of things.”

“But that’s no reason,” interrupted Oswald, “why you and the inventors who were behind you, and the Germans who made and loaded and fired that shell, shouldn’t all get together to do something that will grow and endure. Instead of killing one another.”

“Ah, that’s it!” said Peter. “But the word for that isn’t Peace.”

“Then what is the word for it?”

“I don’t know,” said Peter. “The Great Game, perhaps.”

“And where does it take you?”

Peter threw out his hands. “It’s an exploration,” he said. “It will take man to the centre of the earth; it will take him to the ends of space, between the atoms and among the stars. How can we tell beforehand? You must have faith. But of one thing I am sure, that man cannot stagnate. It is forbidden. It is the uttermost sin. Why, the Old Man will come out of his office himself to prevent it! This war and all the blood and loss of it is because the new things are entangled among old and dead things, worn-out and silly things, and we’ve not had the vigour to get them free. Old idiot nationality, national conceit—expanding to imperialism, nationality in a state of megalomania, has been allowed to get hold of the knife that was meant for a sane generation to carve out a new world with. Heaven send he cuts his own throat this time! Or else there may be a next time.... I’m all for the one world state, and the end of flags and kings and custom houses. But I have my doubts of all this talk of making the world safe—safe for democracy. I want the world made one for the adventure of mankind, which is quite another story. I have been in the world now, Nobby, for five-and-twenty years, and I am only beginning to suspect the wonder and beauty of the things we men might know and do. If only we could get our eyes and hands free of the old inheritance. What has mankind done yet to boast about? I despise human history—because I believe in God. Not the God you don’t approve of, Nobby, but in my Old Experimenter, whom I confess I don’t begin to understand, and in the far-off, eternal scheme he hides from us and which he means us to develop age by age. Oh! I don’t understand him, I don’t begin to explain him; he’s just a figure for what I feel is the reality. But he is right, he is wonderful. And instead of just muddling about over the surface of his universe, we have to get into the understanding of it to the very limits of our ability, to live our utmost and do the intensest best we can.”

“Yes,” said Oswald; “yes.” This was after his own heart, and yet it did not run along the lines of the Valedictory that had flowered with such Corinthian richness overnight. He had been thinking then of world peace; what Peter was driving at now was a world purpose; but weren’t the two after all the same thing? He sat with his one eye reflecting the red light of the fire, and the phrases that had come in such generous abundance overnight now refused to come at all.

Peter, on the couch, continued to think aloud.

“Making the world safe for democracy,” said Peter. “That isn’t quite it. If democracy means that any man may help who can, that school and university will give every man and woman the fairest chance, the most generous inducement to help, to do the thing he can best do under the best conditions, then, Yes; but if democracy means getting up a riot and boycott among the stupid and lazy and illiterate whenever anything is doing, then I say No! Every human being has got to work, has got to take part. If our laws and organization don’t insist upon that, the Old Experimenter will. So long as the world is ruled by stale ideas and lazy ideas, he is determined that it shall flounder from war to war. Now what does this democracy mean? Does it mean a crowd of primitive brutes howling down progress and organization? because if it does, I want to be in the machine-gun section. When you talk of education, Nobby, you think of highly educated people, of a nation instructed through and through. But what of democracy in Russia, where you have a naturally clever people in a state of peasant ignorance—who can’t even read? Until the schoolmaster has talked to every one for ten or twelve years, can you have what President Wilson thinks of as democracy at all?”

“Now there you meet me,” said Oswald. “That is the idea I have been trying to get at with you.” And for some minutes the palatial dimensions of the lost Valedictory loomed out. Where he had said “peace” overnight, however, he now said progress.

But the young man on the couch was much too keenly interested to make a good audience. When presently Oswald propounded his theory that all the great world religions were on the side of this World Republic that he and Peter desired, Peter demurred.

“But is that true of Catholicism for instance?” said Peter.

Oswald quoted, “I am the Vine and ye are the Branches.”

“Yes,” said Peter. “But look at the Church itself. Don’t look at the formula but at the practice and the daily teaching. Is it truly a growing Vine?” The reality of Catholicism, Peter argued, was a traditional, sacramental religion, a narrow fetish religion with a specialized priest, it was concerned primarily with another world, it set its face against any conception of a scheme of progress in this world apart from its legend of the sacrifice of the Mass.

“All good Catholics sneer at progress,” said Peter. “Take Belloc and Chesterton, for example; they hate the idea of men working steadily for any great scheme of effort here. They hold by stagnant standards, planted deep in the rich mud of life. What’s the Catholic conception of human life?—guzzle, booze, call the passion of the sexes unclean and behave accordingly, confess, get absolution, and at it again. Is there any recognition in Catholicism of the duty of keeping your body fit or your brain active? They’re worse than the man who buried his talent in a clean napkin; they bury it in wheezy fat. It’s a sloven’s life. What have we in common with that? Always they are harking back to the thirteenth century, to the peasant life amidst dung and chickens. It’s a different species of mind from ours, with the head and feet turned backward. What is the good of expecting the Pope, for instance, and his Church to help us in creating a League of Nations? His aim would be a world agreement to stop progress, and we want to release it. He wants peace in order to achieve nothing, and we want peace in order to do everything. What is the good of pretending that it is the same peace? A Catholic League of Nations would be a conspiracy of stagnation, another Holy Alliance. What real world unity can come through them? Every step on the way to the world state and the real unification of men will be fought by the stagnant men and the priests. Why blind ourselves to that? Progress is a religion in itself. Work and learning are our creed. We cannot make terms with any other creed. The priest has got his God and we seek our God for ever. The priest is finished and completed and self-satisfied, and we—we are beginning....”