The ancient world together with its ideas and ideals was dead and all efforts to set back the clock of history were doomed beforehand. Life means progress, and progress means suffering. The old order of society was rapidly disintegrating. The army was a mutinous mob of foreign mercenaries. The frontier was in open revolt. England and the other outlying districts had long since been surrendered to the barbarians.
When the final catastrophe took place, those brilliant young men who in centuries past had entered the service of the state found themselves deprived of all but one chance for advancement. That was a career in the Church. As Christian archbishop of Spain, they could hope to exercise the power formerly held by the proconsul. As Christian authors, they could be certain of a fairly large public if they were willing to devote themselves exclusively to theological subjects. As Christian diplomats, they could be sure of rapid promotion if they were willing to represent the bishop of Rome at the imperial court of Constantinople or undertake the hazardous job of gaining the good will of some barbarous chieftain in the heart of Gaul or Scandinavia. And finally, as Christian financiers, they could hope to make fortunes administering those rapidly increasing estates which had made the occupants of the Lateran Palace the largest landowners of Italy and the richest men of their time.
We have seen something of the same nature during the last five years. Up to the year 1914 the young men of Europe who were ambitious and did not depend upon manual labor for their support almost invariably entered the service of the state. They became officers of the different imperial and royal armies and navies. They filled the higher judicial positions, administered the finances or spent years in the colonies as governors or military commanders. They did not expect to grow very rich, but the social prestige of the offices which they held was very great and by the application of a certain amount of intelligence, industry and honesty, they could look forward to a pleasant life and an honorable old age.
Then came the war and swept aside these last remnants of the old feudal fabric of society. The lower classes took hold of the government. Some few among the former officials were too old to change the habits of a lifetime. They pawned their orders and died. The vast majority, however, surrendered to the inevitable. From childhood on they had been educated to regard business as a low profession, not worthy of their attention. Perhaps business was a low profession, but they had to choose between an office and the poor house. The number of people who will go hungry for the sake of their convictions is always relatively small. And so within a few years after the great upheaval, we find most of the former officers and state officials doing the sort of work which they would not have touched ten years ago and doing it not unwillingly. Besides, as most of them belonged to families which for generations had been trained in executive work and were thoroughly accustomed to handle men, they have found it comparatively easy to push ahead in their new careers and are today a great deal happier and decidedly more prosperous than they had ever expected to be.
What business is today, the Church was sixteen centuries ago.
It may not always have been easy for young men who traced their ancestry back to Hercules or to Romulus or to the heroes of the Trojan war to take orders from a simple cleric who was the son of a slave, but the simple cleric who was the son of a slave had something to give which the young men who traced their ancestry back to Hercules and Romulus and the heroes of the Trojan war wanted and wanted badly. And therefore if they were both bright fellows (as they well may have been) they soon learned to appreciate the other fellow’s good qualities and got along beautifully. For it is one of the other strange laws of history that the more things appear to be changing, the more they remain the same.
Since the beginning of time it has seemed inevitable that there shall be one small group of clever men and women who do the ruling and a much larger group of not-quite-so-bright men and women who shall do the obeying. The stakes for which these two groups play are at different periods known by different names. Invariably they represent Strength and Leadership on the one hand and Weakness and Compliance on the other. They have been called Empire and Church and Knighthood and Monarchy and Democracy and Slavery and Serfdom and Proletariat. But the mysterious law which governs human development works the same in Moscow as it does in London or Madrid or Washington, for it is bound to neither time nor place. It has often manifested itself under strange forms and disguises. More than once it has worn a lowly garb and has loudly proclaimed its love for humanity, its devotion to God, its humble desire to bring about the greatest good for the greatest number. But underneath such pleasant exteriors it has always hidden and continues to hide the grim truth of that primeval law which insists that the first duty of man is to keep alive. People who resent the fact that they were born in a world of mammals are apt to get angry at such statements. They call us “materialistics” and “Cynics” and what not. Because they have always regarded history as a pleasant fairy tale, they are shocked to discover that it is a science which obeys the same iron rules which govern the rest of the universe. They might as well fight against the habits of parallel lines or the results of the tables of multiplication.
Personally I would advise them to accept the inevitable.
For then and only then can history some day be turned into something that shall have a practical value to the human race and cease to be the ally and confederate of those who profit by racial prejudice, tribal intolerance and the ignorance of the vast majority of their fellow citizens.
And if any one doubts the truth of this statement, let him look for the proof in the chronicles of those centuries of which I was writing a few pages back.