As the hare is timid—no! They have made good their fighting record in war. They have proved themselves over and over again to be tranquilly courageous in moments of acute peril. They have faced “their duty and their death” as composedly as Englishmen; and nobler comparison there is none. The sinking of the Titanic offered but one opportunity out of many for the display of a quality which is apt to be described in superlatives; but which is, nevertheless, an inherent principle of manhood. The protective instinct is strong in the native American. He does not prate about the sacredness of human life, because he knows, consciously or unconsciously, that the most sacred thing in life is the will to surrender it unfalteringly.
Of what then are Americans afraid, and what form does their timidity take? Mr. Harold Stearns puts the case coarsely and strongly when he affirms that our moral code resolves itself into fear of what people may say. With a profound and bitter distaste for things as they are, he bids us beware lest we confuse “the reformistic tendencies of our national life—Pollyanna optimism, prohibition, blue laws, clericalism, home and foreign missions, exaggerated reverence for women, with anything a civilized man can legitimately call moral idealism.... These manifestations are the fine flower of timidity, and fear, and ignorance.”
Mr. Stearns is a robust writer. His antagonists, if he has any, need never fear the sharp thrust of an understatement. He recognizes the tyranny of opinion in the United States; but he does not do full justice to its serio-comic aspects, to the part it plays in trivial as well as in august affairs, to the nervousness of our regard, to the absurdities of our subordination. There are successful newspapers and periodicals whose editors and contributors walk a chalked path, shunning facts, ignoring issues, avoiding the two things which spell life for all of us—men and customs—and triumphantly presenting a non-existent world to unobservant readers. Henry Adams said that the magazine-made female has not a feature that would have been recognized by Adam; but our first father’s experience, while intimate and conclusive, was necessarily narrow. We have evolved a magazine-made universe, unfamiliar to the eyes of the earth-dweller, and unrelated to his soul.
When this country was pronounced to be too democratic for liberty, the epigram came as close to the truth as epigrams are ever permitted to come. Democracies have been systematically praised because we stand committed to democratic tenets, and have no desire to foul our own roost. It is granted that equality, rather than freedom, is their animating principle. It is granted also that they are sometimes unfortunate in their representatives; that their legislative bodies are neither intelligent nor disinterested, and that their public service is apt to be distinguished for its incapacity. But with so much vigour and proficiency manifested every day in private ventures, we feel they can afford a fair share of departmental incompetence. The tremendous reserves of will and manhood, the incredible insufficiency of direction, which Mr. Wells remarked in democratic England when confronted by an overwhelming crisis, were equally apparent in the United States. It would seem as though a high average of individual force and intelligence failed to offer material for leadership.
The English, however, unlike Americans, refuse to survey with unconcern the spectacle of chaotic officialdom. They are a fault-finding people, and have expressed their dissatisfaction since the days of King John and the Magna Carta. They were no more encouraged to find fault than were other European commonalties that kept silence, or spoke in whispers. The Plantagenets were a high-handed race. The hot-tempered Tudors resented any opinions their subjects might form. Elizabeth had no more loyal servant than the unlucky John Stubbs, who lost his right hand for the doubtful pleasure of writing the “Gaping Gulf.” Any other woman would have been touched when the culprit, raising his hat with his left hand which had been mercifully spared, cried aloud, “God save the Queen!” Not so the great Elizabeth. Stubbs had expressed his views upon her proposed marriage to the Duke of Anjou, and it was no business of his to have views, much less to give them utterance; while his intimation that, at forty-six, she was unlikely to bear children was the most unpardonable truth he could have spoken.
The Stuarts, with the exception of the second Charles, were as resentful of candour as were the Tudors. “I hope,” said James the First to his Commons, “that I shall hear no more about liberty of speech.” The Hanoverians heartily disliked British frankness because they heartily disliked their unruly British subjects. George the Third had all Elizabeth’s irascibility without her power to indulge it. And Victoria was not much behind either of them—witness her indignation at the “Greville Memoirs,” “an insult to royalty,” and her regret that the publishers were not open to prosecution.
It was no use. Nothing could keep the Englishman from speaking his mind. With him it was not only “What is there that a man dare not do?” but “What is there that a man dare not say?” Many a time he paid more for the privilege than it was worth; but he handed it down to his sons, who took care that it was not lost through disuse. When Sorbière visited England in 1663, he was amazed to find the “common people” discussing public affairs in taverns and inns, recalling the glories as well as the discomforts of Cromwell’s day, and grumbling over the taxes. “They do not forbear saying what they think of the king himself.” In the “Memoirs” of the publisher, John Murray, there is an amusing letter from the Persian envoy, Mirza Abul Hassan, dated 1824, and expressing his opinion of a government which permitted such unrestrained liberty. Englishmen “do what they like, say what they like, write what they like in their newspapers,” comments the Oriental with bewildered but affectionate contempt. “How far do you think it safe to go in defying your sovereign?” asked Madame de Pompadour of John Wilkes, when that notorious plain-speaker had taken refuge in Paris from his incensed king and exasperated creditors. “That, Madame,” said the member from Aylesbury, “is what I am trying to find out.”
In our day the indifference of the British Government to what used to be called “treasonable utterances” has in it a galling element of contempt. Not that the utterances are invariably contemptible. Far from it. Blighting truths as well as extravagant senilities may still be heard in Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square. But the orators might be addressing their audiences in classic Greek for any token the London bobby gives of listening or comprehending. “Words are the daughters of earth; deeds are the sons of Heaven.” The bobby has never heard this grandiloquent definition; but he divides them as clearly in his own mind into hot air and disorderly conduct, and he takes his measures accordingly.
In the United States, as in all countries which enjoy a representative government, censure and praise run in familiar grooves. The party which is out sees nothing but graft and incapacity in the party which is in; and the party which is in sees nothing but greed and animosity in the party which is out. This antagonism is duly reflected by the press; and the job of arriving at a correct conclusion is left to the future historian. As an instance of the fashion in which history can be sidetracked by politics, the reader is referred to the portraits of Andrew Jackson as drawn by Mr. Beveridge in his “Life of John Marshall,” and by Mr. Bowers in his “Party Battles of the Jackson Period.”
The first lesson taught us by the Great War was that we got nowhere in political leading-strings, and that none of our accustomed formulas covered this strange upheaval. It was like trying to make a correct survey of land which was being daily cracked by earthquakes. Our national timidity entrenched itself behind a wilful disregard of facts. It was content to view the conflict as a catastrophe for which nobody, or everybody, was to blame. Our national intrepidity manifested itself from the outset in a sense of human responsibility, in a bitter denial of our right to ignorance or indifference. The timidity was not an actual fear of getting hurt; the intrepidity was not insensitiveness to danger. What tore our Nation asunder was the question of accepting or evading a challenge which had—so we at first thought—only a spiritual significance.