Perhaps there is even a biological necessity for the aversion to old-fashioned work that is apparent under all flags. Possibly we might find analogies in nature that would cast a light on the subject. Let us consider the case of the bees—which moralists persist in pointing to for our emulation. Every bee-keeper knows that when a hive of bees takes to robbing other hives its usefulness is ended. Robber bees, that have once learned the ease and delight of plundering the accumulated stores of other hives, will never go back to the drudgery of gathering their food from the flowers. They will go on robbing until they are destroyed in battle by hives that are able to protect themselves or until they have starved in the midst of plenty because they refused to work. I do not know whether Fabre or Maeterlinck has studied the degeneracy and downfall of a hive of bees that has taken to robbing, but it would be worth their while.
But people will protest at once that the Great War was not a war of plunder. It was a war to fight back the nation that had started out to plunder the world. Blind! Every nation engaged in the war plundered itself even though it did not plunder others. All our reserves of wealth, food materials, and resources were of necessity thrown into the war and were as certainly destroyed or plundered as if we had been overrun by the enemy. When the armistice was declared we should have faced the future as nations that had been defeated rather than as victors. Unless we do that without further delay the defeat of civilization may be complete.
At this point my meditations were interrupted by my mild and pleasant-voiced chauffeur. He glared back over my shoulder with a real fighting face.
"What's the matter?" I asked in alarm.
"That driver back there gave me a look and I was giving him one back." I admitted that he certainly was giving him a look.
"Some fellows think they own the streets," he grumbled. "That fellow tried to edge me out of my place and when he found he couldn't do it he was sore. A fellow like that makes me want to get back to the primitive with him." He glared back once more, but the other driver had disappeared in the traffic.
But his phrase stuck and it seems significant—"Get back to the primitive."
I wonder if my chauffeur originated it—or is it a gem from some propaganda that I will meet with when I resume my travels? Anyway, it is most excellent good. Getting back to the primitive is about the most natural thing that human beings do just now. For long and dark ages the world was ruled by big biceps rather than by big brains—and everything was primitive. And during the Great War we went back to the primitive with scientific thoroughness. The ape and tiger were not only given a new lease of life, but were trained and equipped for their work by the best brains of the world. To the ferocity of the primitive we added the magic of science—but it is doubtful if science has enough magic left to recapture and cage the ape and tiger. The primitive man is proud of himself and conscious of his power. Indeed, he even feels benevolent toward a world that he feels competent to manage and control. And that serene kindly, capable attitude is the most dangerous aspect of the revolutionary mood of mankind. The anarchists and agitators we understand to some extent and can deal with. They are a natural reaction in a world of ruthless enterprise. But these placid, altruistic world-wreckers raise goose-flesh on me. They give me a grue. During the past thirty years I have met many anarchists and have not contended with them, for they know the wrong side of every subject so exhaustively that they can down any one in an argument. Though all of them talked violently, most of them were too human to do anything reckless. I have in mind at the present moment a tender-hearted anarchist whose whole soul revolted against the injustice and cruelty of organized society. In theory he would have torn down governments, burned cities, and assassinated kings and plutocrats. On the platform and in the Red press he was terrible.