Readers and Writers (1917-1921)

by A. R. Orage

Among the objects set out to be accomplished by the London Mercury is the advancement of English style. It is a worthy and even a momentous object, but the London Mercury is not the first modern journal to venture upon this quest. After all, I, in my way, during the last seven years or so, have made occasional references to current English style, and my comments cannot be said to be distinguished by any particular tenderness to bad English, by whomsoever it has been written. It amused me, therefore, to read sundry and divers exhortations to Mr. Squire to be severe, and, if need be, “savage” in criticism, and especially when I observed that some of the names appended to the advice were of writers who have anything but appreciated the severity, let alone the “savagery,” of reviews addressed to themselves. Let it pass. The thing in question is English style, and nobody can be too enthusiastic in its maintenance and improvement. The peril of English style, I take it, lies in its very virtue, that of directness, and its fighting edges are to be found where the colloquial and the vernacular (or, let us say, the idiomatic) meet and mix. The English vernacular is the most powerful and simple language that was ever written, but the danger always lies in wait for it of slipping into the English colloquial, which, by the same token, is one of the worst of languages. The difference between them is precisely the difference between Ariel and Caliban; and I am not sure that “Shakespeare” had not this, among other things, in mind when he dreamed his myth. Caliban is a direct enough creature to be English, and there are writers who imagine his style to be the mirror of perfection. But Ariel is no less direct; he is only Caliban transformed and purified and become a thing of light. There is, of course, no rule for distinguishing between them; between the permissible and the forbidden use of the colloquial; for it is obvious that the vernacular is finally derived from the colloquial. The decision rests with taste, which alone can decide what of the colloquial shall be allowed to enter into the vernacular. In general, I should say, the criterion is grace; the hardest, the rarest, but the most exquisite of all the qualities of style. I hope one day to see English written in the vernacular, with all its strength and directness, but with grace added unto it. Newman, perhaps, was furthest of all writers on the way to it. But Newman did not always charm. Now I have written the word, I would substitute charm for grace, and say that the perfect English style, which nobody has yet written, will charm by its power.

Mr. G. K. Chesterton on Rome and Germany.—Hovelaque’s Les Causes profondes de la Guerre is either the original or a plagiarism of Mr. G. K. Chesterton’s theory that the war was only an episode in the eternal “revolt” of “Germany” against “Rome.” I put these words into quarantine to signify that they are to be handled with care; for it is not only Germany or Rome that is in question, but the psychological characteristics and the relation between them which they embody. Thus raised to psychological dimensions, Germany and Rome become principles, types of mentality: in radical opposition. Germany is of one camp, Rome is of the other, and given the fact of their inherent antagonism, war between them is endless. Mr. Mann, a German writer, has carried the subject further; he has entered into particulars. In the following pairs of qualities, tabulated by Mr. Mann, the first of each is to be attributed to “Germany” and the other to “Rome.” Heroic, rational; people, masses; personality, individuality; culture, civilisation; spiritual life, social life; aristocracy, democracy; romance, classicism; nationalism, internationalism. I do not know how Mr. Chesterton will fare among these pairs of opposites, for it appears to me that his preferences are to be found at least as often among the “German” group as among the “Roman” group. There, however, they are, as drawn up by a supporter of his general theory, and we must leave him to make the best of them.

There is another pair which Mr. Mann has not mentioned, though it has been brought close home to many of us. The German “Persius” has confessed that “the lie has always been one of Germany’s chief weapons, both by land and sea.” The lie, however, is not the “Roman” way; the “Roman” way is silence, and anybody engaged in the dissemination of ideas knows which of the two forms of opposition is the more difficult to meet. After all, the liar takes risks; moreover, he does the idea he opposes the honour of noticing it if only to lie about it. But silence risks nothing; it kills without leaving a trace.

Leaving the subject where, for the moment, it is, we can inquire whether the suggested antagonism is not altogether false. Is Rome so eternal as all that, or Germany either? We have been familiarised with a view that represents the map of Europe as a map primarily of mind; but I can discover in such a map no confirmation of the statement that it is Rome and Germany that are in permanent conflict. On the contrary, what we call “formal mind”—in other words, the rationalistic consciousness—appears to me to distinguish “Rome” quite as much as “Germany.” It may be true that on the whole the “Roman” qualities are better integrated and that the “Roman” type is more completely a “man of the world.” But, in comparison with a type of the universal man, the man of the whole world, I doubt whether it can be said that the “Roman” is much more inclusive than the German. Both exclude a good deal, and thus the opposition between them is not of principle, but of accident, the accident being that the anthology of qualities which we call “Rome” differs from the anthology called German. It would follow from this that so far from being in necessarily eternal conflict “Rome” and “Germany” are susceptible of a synthesis in which the qualities of each will complement the qualities of the other. “Germany,” in other words, needs to Romanise, while “Rome” needs to “Germanise.” Their approach to each other would mark the end of the conflict.

In so far as it is true that “Germany” represents the “elemental instincts” always in revolt against “Rome,” “the representative of the supremacy of reason” (Hovelaque), there are grounds for believing that a psychological rapprochement is necessary to the psychic health no less than to the peace of Europe. Long before the war we heard, even in this country, criticism of the right of reason to supremacy; and, strangely enough, it was from the “Roman” Mr. Chesterton that the criticism came most powerfully. “Germany,” in that case, may certainly be said to have taken the lead in the active revolt against Rome; but it was, we must observe, against a Rome already weakened from within by the dissatisfaction with Romanism of many of the leading “Romans.” The fact is that the “supremacy of reason,” for which “Rome” stands, is always in danger, like every other supremacy, of degenerating into a dictatorship; and the dictatorship which reason was establishing before the war involved precisely the suppression of the “elemental instincts” attributed to Germany. The so-called encirclement of Germany was, in fact, and in psychological terms, the rational encirclement of instinct; and I must again observe that it was not in geographical Germany alone that the encirclement was felt to be oppressive, but in every “Germany within us,” in so far as each of us contained “elemental instincts” of any kind. The meaning of what I am saying is that the elemental instincts, call them German, or anything you please, cannot be permanently tyrannised over by “reason”; nor should they be. Nor is it necessary that reason should attempt such a dictatorship. Its rule should be that of a constitutional monarch under the direction of representatives, not of itself, but of the elemental instincts. The practical conclusion to be drawn is that the “eternal antagonism” of “Rome” and “Germany” is not a necessary fact in psychology. It becomes a fact only when “Rome” aims at a dictatorship of reason to the inevitable isolation and suppression of “Germany.” Reason must learn how to cultivate its instincts.

I do not imagine that Mr. Chesterton identifies “Rome” with the Holy See, though others, no doubt, do. It is interesting, however, to remark that before the war, and for a considerable period during the war, the policy of the Holy See was directed to the support of Germany. I have often wondered how a Catholic like M. Hovelaque accommodates his thesis with that fact. If the war, as he says, was only an episode in the secular conflict of Germany with Rome (meaning the Roman Church as the spiritual successor of the Roman Empire), how came it that before and during the war the directors of the Roman Church were pro-German? Something must surely be wrong here; for either the Roman Church did not take that view of Germany which M. Hovelaque has defined, or, as seems to me more probable, the Holy See had another end in view than victory over Germany, namely, alliance with a prospectively victorious Germany! With this key, I think, the mystery is unlocked for the ordinary man, however much it continues sealed to the faithful. As The Times Literary Supplement said: “Modernists understand no better than Newman the springs of Roman ecclesiastical policy, which is never fanatical or idealistic, but always based on cool political calculation.” And, undoubtedly, the “cool political calculation” of the Holy See, both before and during the first years of the war, was that Germany would win. If this was not the case, how are we to explain the sudden change over of policy when it began to appear that Germany, after all, was not to be the victor? That at a certain stage in the war such a change took place is well known to everybody, and it was openly admitted in the Catholic Dublin Review. “The pendulum of Catholicism,” said the Dublin Review, “has swung away from Germany ... with Austria and Spain ... and with the English-speaking peoples and their Latin Allies the Catholic order in the era of the future.” The “eternal conflict” theory must go by the board after this, for it obviously fails to fit the facts.

The Origins of Marx.—It is to be hoped that the reputation of Marx will not long survive the war unimpaired. I can scarcely think that the German Socialists will be so proud of their Marxism in the future as they have been in the past, since it will have clearly betrayed them into one of the most shameful moral surrenders in all history. It is dangerous for a man’s writings to be regarded as the “Bible” even of Socialists; and when, in addition, the Marxian Bible, unlike the other, aims at and, in a sense, achieves, logical consistency, the peril of it is greater upon minds lacking the inestimable virtue of common sense. Marx was not himself a slave of his own inspiration; he was anything but a Marxian in the sense in which his followers are Marxian. He had, indeed, a very sharp word for certain of the disciples whose breed, unfortunately, has not been extinguished by it. “Amateur anarchists,” he called them, who “make up by rabid declarations and bloodthirsty rampings for the utter insignificance of their political existence.” Groups of his disciples, answering perfectly to this description, are to be found to-day in English as well as in other Labour circles. In between their rampings they reveal their political insignificance by inquiring of each other such elementary facts about literature and history as schoolboys should be ashamed to have forgotten. And the surprising thing is that even these open confessions induce no reaction upon their conviction that they understand Marx.

It is a common supposition among Marx’s followers that not only has he left nothing to be said on the subject of economics, but that nothing was said before him. One German Socialist, at any rate, has rid himself of this notion, for Dr. Menger has remarked that “Marx was completely under the influence of the earlier English Socialists, and more particularly of William Thompson.” In a valuable essay upon Marx, by Professor Alfred Rahilly, the facts are let out. Marx, it appears, came across Thompson’s work on The Distribution of Wealth (1824) in the British Museum, and read it with great profit. From Thompson he took practically all his chief doctrines, with the exception of his peculiar interpretation of history in terms of economics. The theory of Value as measured by labour-power, the distinction between capital and capitalism, the law of decreasing utility, and, above all, the very phrase as well as the very idea of Surplus Value—all of these “Marxian” doctrines Marx found in Thompson. I am not arguing that Marx was the less for having been indebted to his English predecessors. He would, indeed, in my opinion, have been a greater man if he had borrowed more of Thompson, for Thompson possessed the common sense to realise that it was possible that the concentration of capital might take place simultaneously, with a diffusion of ownership—an idea which would have spared Marx the ignominy of many of his most fanatical disciples. What, on the other hand, was great in Marx, was his capacity for large generalisations, and his industry in establishing them. In this respect he belonged to the great Victorians, and, as such, he deserves more credit than his present-day followers will permit him to receive.

Marx as Politician.—The centenary celebrations of Marx ought not to conclude without a tribute to his astonishing political insight. Philosophically Marx was confused; as an economist he has suffered from his disciples; but as a political critic he has seldom been surpassed. Particular attention may be drawn to his analysis of the circumstances of Bismarck’s annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, and to his forecast of the consequences. Though writing in London, and without our historic knowledge of the Ems telegram, or our present knowledge of the world-war, Marx might have written his manifesto to-day; but, in that case, I doubt whether he would be published in Germany, or read with much attention by Marx’s followers in this country. It is a strange reflection, indeed, upon the fate of the works of Marx that it is precisely the most clear and prophetic part of them which his professed followers neglect. For his dubious forecasts and his riddling analyses they have a reverence that transcends bibliolatry; but, concerning his most absolute and explicit political policies—not a word!

The war of 1870, as we all know, was for Germany a declared war of defence, exactly like the present war. Germany is always defending herself at the world’s expense. No sooner, however, had the ostensible motive of defence been satisfied by Sedan, than the real objects of German militarism began to be revealed. Unhindered by the earlier protestations of the Emperor William that Germany was at war only with Napoleon and not with France, the militarists inspired the German liberal bourgeoisie to press for annexations in the name of race and security. They dared to pretend, said Marx, that the people of the two provinces were burning to be annexed to Germany, and they adopted without reflection the excuse of the military party that a rectification of the Imperial frontiers was a strategic necessity. Thus, concluded Marx, they insisted upon sowing in the terms of peace the seeds of new wars—the phrase is Marx’s own. And what wars, too! Marx was not blind to their probable character. History, he said, would not measure the German offence by the number of miles of territory annexed, but by the significance of the fact of annexation. This significance was no less than a declaration of “a policy of conquest,” from which might be anticipated in logical order a German racial war against “the Slav and Latin races combined.” The war of 1870, having thus ended, would, he said, be the precursor of a series of international wars, in the course of which it was probable that the working-classes everywhere would succumb to the forces of militarism and capitalism. What comment has the Call or any of our contemporary Marxian pacifists to make upon this? It is not right that they should ignore it, more especially when it is recalled that Marx paid a tribute to the English working-classes of his day, who “protested with all their might against the dismemberment of France.”