Addresses in America, 1919

by John Galsworthy

“I’d rather not,” he said; “if you don’t mind.”

A quarter of an hour passed, while the young man’s cigarette grew moister, and the elder man’s cigar shorter. Then the latter stirred, took it from under his grey moustache, looked critically at it, held it out a little way towards the other with the side which was least burned-down foremost, and said:

“Unless you’d like to take it from the edge.”

On the other hand one has often travelled in these last years with extreme embarrassment because our soldiers were so extraordinarily anxious that one should smoke their cigarettes, eat their apples, and their sausages. The marvels of comradeship they have performed would fill the libraries of the world.

The second main new factor in the world’s life is the disappearance of the old autocracies.

In 1910, walking in Hyde Park with a writer friend, I remember saying: “It’s the hereditary autocracies in Germany, Austria, and Russia which make the danger of war.” He did not agree—but no two writers agree with each other at any given moment. “If only autocracies go down in the wreckage of this war!” was almost the first thought I put down in writing when the war broke out. Well, they are gone! They were an anachronism, and without them and the bureaucracies and secrecy which buttressed them we should not, I think, have had this world catastrophe. But let us not too glibly assume that the forms of government which take their place can steer the battered ships of the nations in the very troubled waters of to-day, or that they will be truly democratic. Even highly democratic statesmen have been known to resort to the way of the headmaster at my old school, who put a motion to the masters’ meeting and asked for a show of hands in its favour. Not one hand was held up. “Then,” he said, “I shall adopt it with the greater regret.” Nevertheless, the essential new factor is, that, whereas in 1914 civilisation was on two planes, it is now, theoretically, at least, on the one democratic plane or level. That is a great easing of the world-situation, and removes a chief cause of international misunderstanding. The rest depends on what we can now make of democracy. Surely no word can so easily be taken in vain; to have got rid of the hereditary principle in government is by no means to have made democracy a real thing. Democracy is neither government by rabble, nor government by caucus. Its measure as a beneficent principle is the measure of the intelligence, honesty, public spirit, and independence of the average voter. The voter who goes to the poll blind of an eye and with a cast in the other, so that he sees no issue clear, and every issue only in so far as it affects him personally, is not precisely the sort of ultimate administrative power we want. Intelligent, honest, public-spirited, and independent voters guarantee an honest and intelligent governing body. The best men the best government is a truism which cannot be refuted. Democracy to be real and effective must succeed in throwing up into the positions of administrative power the most trustworthy of its able citizens. In other words it must incorporate and make use of the principle of aristocracy; government by the best—best in spirit, not best-born. Rightly seen, there is no tug between democracy and aristocracy; aristocracy should be the means and machinery by which democracy works itself out. What then can be done to increase in the average voter intelligence and honesty, public spirit and independence? Nothing save by education. The Arts, the Schools, the Press. It is impossible to overestimate the need for vigour, breadth, restraint, good taste, enlightenment, and honesty in these three agencies. The artist, the teacher (and among teachers one includes, of course, religious teachers in so far as they concern themselves with the affairs of this world), and the journalist have the future in their hands. As they are fine the future will be fine; as they are mean the future will be mean. The burden is very specially on the shoulders of Public Men, and that most powerful agency the Press, which reports them. Do we realise the extent to which the modern world relies for its opinions on public utterances and the Press? Do we realise how completely we are all in the power of report? Any little lie or exaggerated sentiment uttered by one with a bee in his bonnet, with a principle, or an end to serve, can, if cleverly expressed and distributed, distort the views of thousands, sometimes of millions. Any wilful suppression of truth for Party or personal ends can so falsify our vision of things as to plunge us into endless cruelties and follies. Honesty of thought and speech and written word is a jewel, and they who curb prejudice and seek honourably to know and speak the truth are the only true builders of a better life. But what a dull world if we can’t chatter and write irresponsibly, can’t slop over with hatred, or pursue our own ends without scruple! To be tied to the apron-strings of truth, or coiffed with the nightcap of silence; who in this age of cheap ink and oratory will submit to such a fate? And yet, if we do not want another seven million violent deaths, another eight million maimed and halt and blind, and if we do not want anarchy, our tongues must be sober, and we must tell the truth. Report, I would almost say, now rules the world and holds the fate of man on the sayings of its many tongues. If the good sense of mankind cannot somehow restrain utterance and cleanse report, Democracy, so highly vaunted, will not save us; and all the glib words of promise spoken might as well have lain unuttered in the throats of orators. We are always in peril under Democracy of taking the line of least resistance and immediate material profit. The gentleman, for instance, whoever he was, who first discovered that he could sell his papers better by undercutting the standard of his rivals, and, appealing to the lower tastes of the Public under the flag of that convenient expression “what the Public wants,” made a most evil discovery. The Press is for the most part in the hands of men who know what is good and right. It can be a great agency for levelling up. But whether on the whole it is so or not, one continually hears doubted. There ought to be no room for doubt in any of our minds that the Press is on the side of the angels. It can do as much as any other single agency to raise the level of honesty, intelligence, public spirit, and taste in the average voter, in other words, to build Democracy on a sure foundation. This is a truly tremendous trust; for the safety of civilisation and the happiness of mankind hangs thereby. The saying about little children and the kingdom of heaven was meant for the ears of all those who have it in their power to influence simple folk. To be a good and honest editor, a good and honest journalist is in these days to be a veritable benefactor of mankind.

Now take the function of the artist, of the man who in stone, or music, marble, bronze, paint, or words, can express himself, and his vision of life, truly and beautifully. Can we set limit to his value? The answer is in the affirmative. We set such limitation to his value that he has been known to die of it. And I would only venture to say here that if we don’t increase the store we set by him, we shall, in this reach-me-down age of machines and wholesale standardisations, emulate the Goths who did their best to destroy the art of Rome, and all these centuries later, by way of atonement, have filled the Thiergarten at Berlin and the City of London with peculiar brands of statuary, and are always writing their names on the Sphynx.

I suppose the hardest lesson we all have to learn in life is that we can’t have things both ways. If we want to have beauty, that which appeals not merely to the stomach and the epidermis (which is the function of the greater part of industrialism), but to what lies deeper within the human organism, the heart and the brain, we must have conditions which permit and even foster the production of beauty. The artist, unfortunately, no less than the rest of mankind, must eat to live. Now, if we insist that we will pay the artist only for what fascinates the popular uneducated instincts, he will either produce beauty, remain unpaid and starve; or he will give us shoddy, and fare sumptuously every day. My experience tells me this: An artist who is by accident of independent means can, if he has talent, give the Public what he, the artist, wants, and sooner or later the public will take whatever he gives it, at his own valuation. But very few artists, who have no independent means, have enough character to hold out until they can sit on the Public’s head and pull the Public’s beard, to use the old Sikh saying. How many times have I not heard over here—and it’s very much the same over there—that a man must produce this or that kind of work or else of course he can’t live. My advice—at all events to young artists and writers—is: ‘Sooner than do that and have someone sitting on your head and pulling your beard all the time, go out of business—there are other means of making a living, besides faked or degraded art. Become a dentist and revenge yourself on the Public’s teeth—even editors and picture dealers go to the dentist!’ The artist has got to make a stand against being exploited, and he has got, also, to live the kind of life which will give him a chance to see clearly, to feel truly, and to express beautifully. He, too, is a trustee for the future of mankind. Money has one inestimable value—it guarantees independence, the power of going your own way and giving out the best that’s in you. But, generally speaking, we don’t stop there in our desire for money; and I would say that any artist who doesn’t stop there is not ‘playing the game,’ neither towards himself nor towards mankind; he is not standing up for the faith that is in him, and the future of civilisation.

And now what of the teacher? One of the discouraging truths of life is the fact that a man cannot raise himself from the ground by the hair of his own head. And if one took Democracy logically, one would have to give up the idea of improvement. But things are not always what they seem, as somebody once said; and fortunately, government ‘of the people by the people for the people’ does not in practice prevent the people from using those saving graces—Commonsense and Selection. In fact, only by the use of those graces will democracy work at all. When twelve men get together to serve on a jury, their commonsense makes them select the least stupid among them to be their foreman. Each of them, of course, feels that he is that least stupid man, but since a man cannot vote for himself, he votes for the least dense among his neighbours, and the foreman comes to life. The same principle applied thoroughly enough throughout the social system produces government by the best. And it is more vital to apply it thoroughly in matters of education than in other branches of human activity. But when we have secured our best heads of education, we must trust them and give them real power, for they are the hope—well nigh the only hope—of our future. They alone, by the selection and instruction of their subordinates and the curricula which they lay down, can do anything substantial in the way of raising the standard of general taste, conduct, and learning. They alone can give the starting push towards greater dignity and simplicity; promote the love of proportion, and the feeling for beauty. They alone can gradually instil into the body politic the understanding that education is not a means towards wealth as such, or learning as such, but towards the broader ends of health and happiness. The first necessity for improvement in modern life is that our teachers should have the wide view, and be provided with the means and the curricula which make it possible to apply this enlightenment to their pupils. Can we take too much trouble to secure the best men as heads of education—that most responsible of all positions in the modern State? The child is father to the man. We think too much of politics and too little of education. We treat it almost as cavalierly as the undergraduate treated the Master of Balliol. “Yes,” he said, showing his people round the quadrangle, “that’s the Master’s window;” then, picking up a pebble, he threw it against the window pane. “And that,” he said, as a face appeared, “is the Master!” Democracy has come, and on education Democracy hangs; the thread as yet is slender.