There is an interesting speculation on the theme of what might have happened in Mr. Asquith's book on the origin of the war. Referring to the appointment of Baron Marschall von Bieberstein as German Ambassador to London in 1912 and his death a few months later, he says that he is confident, so far as one can be confident in a matter of conjecture, that if Marschall had lived there would have been no European War in 1914. I fancy that is a common view in informed quarters. Marschall stood intellectually, as well as physically, head and shoulders above the petty men with whom the Kaiser had surrounded himself, and it is inconceivable that he would have allowed his country to drift into war under an entire misapprehension as to the mind and power of this country.
It is in this way that the chapter of accidents plays havoc with the affairs of men. All the woes of Ilium sprang from an elopement, and it is a commonplace that if Cleopatra's nose had been a shade longer—or shorter, for that matter—the whole story of the ancient world would have been altered. I suppose the most momentous political event in the history of the last thousand years was the rupture between England and America, which is said to have happened as the result of a shower of rain. But for that rupture, the British Commonwealth to-day would include the whole North American Continent, and its word would be sovereign over the earth. Perhaps the seat of authority would have been in Washington, instead of London, but wherever it was it would have stabilised this reeling world and given its people a security that now seems unattainable. The speculation which attributes the enormous calamity of the loss of America to a shower of rain is more fanciful, but hardly less reasonable, than that which Mr. Asquith advances in regard to the European War. The Earl of Bute was the evil genius of George III., and the inspiration of his disastrous policy. And the origin of his sinister power was a storm at Epsom which kept the royal party from going home. The Prince of Wales needed someone to make up a hand at cards to pass the time while the shower lasted, and Bute, then a young man, being handy, was selected, and from that incident ingratiated himself with the Prince and still more with the Prince's wife. She established his influence over her son whom later, as George III., he led into the ruinous part of personal government which culminated in the Boston Tea Party, the War of Independence, and the Republic of the Stars and Stripes.
Chance does not, of course, always play a malevolent part like this. It sometimes works as if with a superb and beneficent design. Lincoln, on the threshold of fifty, regarded himself as having failed in life and he died at fifty-six, one of the world's immortals. It was the quite unimportant incident of his debate with Douglas that threw him into prominence on the eve of the crisis which, but for his wisdom and magnanimity, would have left America like Europe, a group of warring States. But in the end chance betrayed him. On the night he was murdered the faithful guardian who had shadowed and protected him throughout the war was sick, and his place was taken by a substitute who became absorbed in the play, and allowed Booth to slip unseen into the President's box and fire the fatal shot. But it might be argued that even in this felon betrayal, chance only completed the splendour of its design, for Lincoln's work was done, and it was the circumstances of his death that threw the nobility of the man into relief for all time.
And while the accidents of life so often seem to take control of events, it is no less true that our most deeply calculated schemes sometimes turn round and smite us. When Queen Victoria's eldest daughter married the King of Prussia's eldest son, it was universally agreed that a grand thing had been done for the peace of the world, and when later a child was born, the rejoicings in London, as you may read in the contemporary records, were like those that welcome a great victory. That child was the ex-Kaiser William, now an exile in Holland. In the light of to-day those rejoicings of sixty odd years ago read like a grim comment on this queer and inexplicable world.
It is one of the agreeable features of the diverting adventure of life that our triumphs so often come clothed in misfortune and that the really big things that happen to us take the shape of trifles. Whenever we are tempted to inveigh against things that go wrong, we might do worse than remember the Field-Marshal's trousers.
IN DEFENCE OF "SKIPPING"
A few days ago Mr. Chesterton expressed a doubt whether he had ever read Boswell "through." Knowing Mr. Chesterton, and having a life-long acquaintance with Boswell, I share his doubt. G.K.C. has an amazing gift for seizing the spirit and purport of a book by turning over the pages in handfuls and sampling a sentence here and there. He treats books as the expert wine-taster treats wines, not drinking them in great coarse gulps, but moistening his lips and catching the bouquet on his palate. The parallel is no doubt as misleading as most parallels are apt to be. Good wines have to be "tasted" in this way, but the better the book the deeper should be the draught or the more deliberate and patient the mastication. "Chewed and digested" is Bacon's phrase.
But I am far too much addicted to "skipping" myself to treat the practice as a crime in others. When I was young and industrious and enthusiastic I read as solemnly and slavishly as anyone. I was like a dog with a bone. The tougher the theme the more I exercised my intellectual molars on it. Stout fellows like Zimmermann On Solitude, and Burke on The Sublime and Beautiful, and Mill On Liberty were the sort of men for my youthful ardour. I cannot honestly say I enjoyed them, but I can honestly say that I read them, and I can also honestly say that I shall never read them or their like again. I finished my drudgery long ago, and have become a mere idler among books, a person who has served his apprenticeship and can go about enjoying himself, taking a sip here and a longish "pull" there, passing over this vintage, and returning to that and generally behaving like a freeman wandering over the estates of the mind, without a duty to anything but his own fancy.
I, too, doubt whether I have read Boswell through. Why should I read it through? I have read the conversations a hundred times and I hope to read them a hundred times more; but I will make no affidavit about the letters. I suspect that I have been "skipping" the letters unconsciously all my life. And Paradise Regained? My conscience is clear about Paradise Lost, and I can still mouth the speeches of the first author of our misfortunes whom the judgment of time had converted into the hero of that immortal poem. But can I put my hand on my heart and say I have read the Regained right through? I cannot. I am not even sure that I have read Shakespeare through. I have a vague notion that in the lusty youth of which I have spoken I did read Titus Andronicus and Pericles with the rest, but I am quite prepared to believe that I only like to believe I did.