The Barbarism of Berlin by G. K. Chesterton
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G. K. Chesterton >> The Barbarism of Berlin
THE BARBARISM OF BERLIN
BY
G.K. CHESTERTON
First Published 1914
Contents
INTRODUCTION: THE FACTS OF THE CASE
I. THE WAR ON THE WORD
II. THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY
III. THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY
IV. THE ESCAPE OF FOLLY
INTRODUCTION.
THE FACTS OF THE CASE.
Unless we are all mad, there is at the back of the most bewildering
business a story: and if we are all mad, there is no such thing as
madness. If I set a house on fire, it is quite true that I may illuminate
many other people's weaknesses as well as my own. It may be that the master
of the house was burned because he was drunk: it may be that the mistress
of the house was burned because she was stingy, and perished arguing about
the expense of a fire-escape. It is, nevertheless, broadly true that they
both were burned because I set fire to their house. That is the story
of the thing. The mere facts of the story about the present European
conflagration are quite as easy to tell.
Before we go on to the deeper things which make this war the most sincere
war of human history, it is as easy to answer the question of why England
came to be in it at all, as it is to ask how a man fell down a coal-hole,
or failed to keep an appointment. Facts are not the whole truth. But
facts are facts, and in this case the facts are few and simple. Prussia,
France, and England had all promised not to invade Belgium. Prussia
proposed to invade Belgium, because it was the safest way of invading
France. But Prussia promised that if she might break in, through her own
broken promise and ours, she would break in and not steal. In other words,
we were offered at the same instant a promise of faith in the future and
a proposal of perjury in the present. Those interested in human origins
may refer to an old Victorian writer of English, who, in the last and most
restrained of his historical essays, wrote of Frederick the Great, the
founder of this unchanging Prussian policy. After describing how Frederick
broke the guarantee he had signed on behalf of Maria Theresa, he then
describes how Frederick sought to put things straight by a promise that
was an insult. "If she would but let him have Silesia, he would, he said,
stand by her against any power which should try to deprive her of her other
dominions, as if he was not already bound to stand by her, or as if his new
promise could be of more value than the old one." That passage was written
by Macaulay, but so far as the mere contemporary facts are concerned it
might have been written by me.
Upon the immediate logical and legal origin of the English interest
there can be no rational debate. There are some things so simple that
one can almost prove them with plans and diagrams, as in Euclid. One
could make a kind of comic calendar of what would have happened to the
English diplomatist, if he had been silenced every time by Prussian
diplomacy. Suppose we arrange it in the form of a kind of diary:
July 24: Germany invades Belgium.
July 25: England declares war.
July 26: Germany promises not to annex Belgium.
July 27: England withdraws from the war.
July 28: Germany annexes Belgium, England declares war.
July 29: Germany promises not to annex France, England withdraws from the
war.
July 30: Germany annexes France, England declares war.
July 31: Germany promises not to annex England.
Aug. 1: England withdraws from the war. Germany invades England.
How long is anybody expected to go on with that sort of game; or keep peace
at that illimitable price? How long must we pursue a road in which promises
are all fetishes in front of us; and all fragments behind us? No; upon the
cold facts of the final negotiations, as told by any of the diplomatists in
any of the documents, there is no doubt about the story. And no doubt about
the villain of the story.
These are the last facts; the facts which involved England. It is equally
easy to state the first facts; the facts which involved Europe. The
prince who practically ruled Austria was shot by certain persons whom the
Austrian Government believed to be conspirators from Servia. The Austrian
Government piled up arms and armies, but said not a word either to Servia
their suspect, or Italy their ally. From the documents it would seem
that Austria kept everybody in the dark, except Prussia. It is probably
nearer the truth to say that Prussia kept everybody in the dark, including
Austria. But all that is what is called opinion, belief, conviction, or
common sense: and we are not dealing with it here. The objective fact is
that Austria told Servia to permit Servian officers to be suspended by the
authority of Austrian officers; and told Servia to submit to this within
forty-eight hours. In other words, the Sovereign of Servia was practically
told to take off not only the laurels of two great campaigns, but his own
lawful and national crown, and to do it in a time in which no respectable
citizen is expected to discharge an hotel bill. Servia asked for time for
arbitration--in short, for peace. But Russia had already begun to mobilise;
and Prussia, presuming that Servia might thus be rescued, declared war.
Between these two ends of fact, the ultimatum to Servia, the ultimatum
to Belgium, anyone so inclined can of course talk as if everything were
relative. If anyone asks why the Czar should rush to the support of
Servia, it is easy to ask why the Kaiser should rush to the support of
Austria. If anyone says that the French would attack the Germans, it
is sufficient to answer that the Germans did attack the French. There
remain, however, two attitudes to consider, even perhaps two arguments to
counter, which can best be considered and countered under this general
head of facts. First of all, there is a curious, cloudy sort of argument,
much affected by the professional rhetoricians of Prussia, who are sent
out to instruct and correct the minds of Americans or Scandinavians. It
consists of going into convulsions of incredulity and scorn at the mention
of Russia's responsibility of Servia, or England's responsibility of
Belgium; and suggesting that, treaty or no treaty, frontier or no frontier,
Russia would be out to slay Teutons or England to steal Colonies. Here, as
elsewhere, I think the professors dotted all over the Baltic plain fail in
lucidity and in the power of distinguishing ideas. Of course it is quite
true that England has material interests to defend, and will probably use
the opportunity to defend them; or, in other words, of course England, like
everybody else, would be more comfortable if Prussia were less predominant.
The fact remains that we did not do what the Germans did. We did not
invade Holland to seize a naval and commercial advantage; and whether
they say that we wished to do it in our greed, or feared to do it in our
cowardice, the fact remains that we did not do it. Unless this commonsense
principle be kept in view, I cannot conceive how any quarrel can possibly
be judged. A contract may be made between two persons solely for material
advantage on each side: but the moral advantage is still generally
supposed to lie with the person who keeps the contract. Surely it cannot
be dishonest to be honest--even if honesty is the best policy. Imagine the
most complex maze of indirect motive; and still the man who keeps faith for
money cannot possibly be worse than the man who breaks faith for money. It
will be noted that this ultimate test applies in the same way to Servia as
to Belgium and Britain. The Servians may not be a very peaceful people,
but on the occasion under discussion it was certainly they who wanted
peace. You may choose to think the Serb a sort of born robber: but on this
occasion it was certainly the Austrian who was trying to rob. Similarly,
you may call England perfidious as a sort of historical summary; and
declare your private belief that Mr. Asquith was vowed from infancy to the
ruin of the German Empire, a Hannibal and hater of the eagles. But, when
all is said, it is nonsense to call a man perfidious because he keeps his
promise. It is absurd to complain of the sudden treachery of a business man
in turning up punctually to his appointment: or the unfair shock given to a
creditor by the debtor paying his debts.
Lastly, there is an attitude, not unknown in the crisis, against which I
should particularly like to protest. I should address my protest especially
to those lovers and pursuers of peace who, very shortsightedly, have
occasionally adopted it. I mean the attitude which is impatient of these
preliminary details about who did this or that, and whether it was right
or wrong. They are satisfied with saying that an enormous calamity, called
war, has been begun by some or all of us and should be ended by some or
all of us. To these people, this preliminary chapter about the precise
happenings must appear not only dry (and it must of necessity be the driest
part of the task) but essentially needless and barren. I wish to tell
these people that they are wrong; that they are wrong upon all principles
of human justice and historic continuity; but that they are specially and
supremely wrong upon their own principles of arbitration and international
peace.
These sincere and high-minded peace-lovers are always telling us that
citizens no longer settle their quarrels by private violence; and that
nations should no longer settle theirs by public violence. They are always
telling us that we no longer fight duels; and need not wage wars. In
short, they perpetually base their peace proposals on the fact that an
ordinary citizen no longer avenges himself with an axe. But how is he
prevented from revenging himself with an axe? If he hits his neighbour on
the head with the kitchen chopper, what do we do? Do we all join hands,
like children playing Mulberry Bush, and say, "We are all responsible for
this; but let us hope it will not spread. Let us hope for the happy day
when we shall leave off chopping at the man's head; and when nobody shall
ever chop anything for ever and ever." Do we say, "Let bygones be bygones;
why go back to all the dull details with which the business began; who can
tell with what sinister motives the man was standing there, within reach of
the hatchet?" We do not. We keep the peace in private life by asking for
the facts of provocation, and the proper object of punishment. We do go
into the dull details; we do enquire into the origins; we do emphatically
enquire who it was that hit first. In short, we do what I have done very
briefly in this place.
Given this, it is indeed true that behind these facts there are truths;
truths of a terrible, of a spiritual sort. In mere fact, the Germanic
power has been wrong about Servia, wrong about Russia, wrong about Belgium,
wrong about England, wrong about Italy. But there was a reason for its
being wrong everywhere; and of that root reason, which has moved half the
world against it, I shall speak later in this series. For that is something
too omnipresent to be proved, too indisputable to be helped by detail. It
is nothing less than the locating, after more than a hundred years of
recriminations and wrong explanations, of the modern European evil; the
finding of the fountain from which poison has flowed upon all the nations
of the earth.
I
THE WAR ON THE WORD
It will hardly be denied that there is one lingering doubt in many, who
recognise unavoidable self-defence in the instant parry of the English
sword, and who have no great love for the sweeping sabre of Sadowa and
Sedan. That doubt is the doubt whether Russia, as compared with Prussia,
is sufficiently decent and democratic to be the ally of liberal and
civilised powers. I take first, therefore, this matter of civilisation.
It is vital in a discussion like this that we should make sure we are
going by meanings and not by mere words. It is not necessary in any
argument to settle what a word means or ought to mean. But it is necessary
in every argument to settle what we propose to mean by the word. So long
as our opponent understands what is the _thing_ of which we are talking,
it does not matter to the argument whether the word is or is not the one
he would have chosen. A soldier does not say "We were ordered to go to
Mechlin; but I would rather go to Malines." He may discuss the etymology
and archaeology of the difference on the march: but the point is that he
knows where to go. So long as we know what a given word is to mean in
a given discussion, it does not even matter if it means something else
in some other and quite distinct discussion. We have a perfect right to
say that the width of a window comes to four feet; even if we instantly
and cheerfully change the subject to the larger mammals, and say that an
elephant has four feet. The identity of the words does not matter, because
there is no doubt at all about the meanings; because nobody is likely to
think of an elephant as four feet long, or of a window as having tusks and
a curly trunk.
It is essential to emphasise this consciousness of the _thing_ under
discussion in connection with two or three words that are, as it were, the
key-words of this war. One of them is the word "barbarian." The Prussians
apply it to the Russians: the Russians apply it to the Prussians. Both,
I think, really mean something that really exists, name or no name. Both
mean different things. And if we ask what these different things are, we
shall understand why England and France prefer Russia; and consider Prussia
the really dangerous barbarian of the two. To begin with, it goes so much
deeper even than atrocities; of which, in the past at least, all the three
Empires of Central Europe have partaken pretty equally, as they partook of
Poland. An English writer, seeking to avert the war by warnings against
Russian influence, said that the flogged backs of Polish women stood
between us and the Alliance. But not long before, the flogging of women by
an Austrian general led to that officer being thrashed in the streets of
London by Barclay and Perkins' draymen. And as for the third power, the
Prussians, it seems clear that they have treated Belgian women in a style
compared with which flogging might be called an official formality. But, as
I say, something much deeper than any such recrimination lies behind the
use of the word on either side. When the German Emperor complains of our
allying ourselves with a barbaric and half-oriental power, he is not (I
assure you) shedding tears over the grave of Kosciusko. And when I say (as
I do most heartily) that the German Emperor is a barbarian, I am not merely
expressing any prejudices I may have against the profanation of churches
or of children. My countrymen and I mean a certain and intelligible thing
when we call the Prussians barbarians. It is quite different from the
thing attributed to Russians; and it could not possibly be attributed to
Russians. It is very important that the neutral world should understand
what this thing is.
If the German calls the Russian barbarous, he presumably means imperfectly
civilised. There is a certain path along which Western nations have
proceeded in recent times, and it is tenable that Russia has not proceeded
so far as the others: that she has less of the special modern system in
science, commerce, machinery, travel, or political constitution. The
Russ ploughs with an old plough; he wears a wild beard; he adores
relics; his life is as rude and hard as that of a subject of Alfred the
Great. Therefore he is, in the German sense, a barbarian. Poor fellows like
Gorky and Dostoieffsky have to form their own reflections on the scenery
without the assistance of large quotations from Schiller on garden seats,
or inscriptions directing them to pause and thank the All-Father for
the finest view in Hesse-Pumpernickel. The Russians, having nothing but
their faith, their fields, their great courage, and their self-governing
communes, are quite cut off from what is called (in the fashionable street
in Frankfort) The True, The Beautiful and The Good. There is a real sense
in which one can call such backwardness barbaric, by comparison with the
Kaiserstrasse; and in that sense it is true of Russia.
Now we, the French and English, do not mean this when we call the Prussians
barbarians. If their cities soared higher than their flying ships, if
their trains travelled faster than their bullets, we should still call
them barbarians. We should know exactly what we meant by it; and we
should know that it is true. For we do not mean anything that is an
imperfect civilisation by accident. We mean something that is the enemy
of civilisation by design. We mean something that is wilfully at war with
the principles by which human society has been made possible hitherto. Of
course it must be partly civilised even to destroy civilisation. Such
ruin could not be wrought by the savages that are merely undeveloped or
inert. You could not have even Huns without horses; or horses without
horsemanship. You could not have even Danish pirates without ships,
or ships without seamanship. This person, whom I may call the Positive
Barbarian, must be rather more superficially up-to-date than what I may
call the Negative Barbarian. Alaric was an officer in the Roman legions:
but for all that he destroyed Rome. Nobody supposes that Eskimos could
have done it at all neatly. But (in our meaning) barbarism is not a matter
of methods, but of aims. We say that these veneered vandals have the
perfectly serious aim of destroying certain ideas, which, as they think,
the world has outgrown; without which, as we think, the world will die.
It is essential that this perilous peculiarity in the Pruss, or Positive
Barbarian, should be seized. He has what he fancies is a new idea; and
he is going to apply it to everybody. As a fact it is simply a false
generalisation; but he is really trying to make it general. This does
not apply to the Negative Barbarian: it does not apply to the Russian
or the Servian, even if they are barbarians. If a Russian peasant does
beat his wife, he does it because his fathers did it before him: he is
likely to beat less rather than more, as the past fades away. He does
not think, as the Prussian would, that he has made a new discovery in
physiology in finding that a woman is weaker than a man. If a Servian
does knife his rival without a word, he does it because other Servians
have done it. He may regard it even as piety, but certainly not as
progress. He does not think, as the Prussian does, that he founds a new
school of horology by starting before the word "Go." He does not think
he is in advance of the world in militarism merely because he is behind
it in morals. No; the danger of the Pruss is that he is prepared to
fight for old errors as if they were new truths. He has somehow heard
of certain shallow simplifications, and imagines that we have never
heard of them. And, as I have said, his limited, but very sincere lunacy
concentrates chiefly in a desire to destroy two ideas, the twin root ideas
of rational society. The first is the idea of record and promise: the
second is the idea of reciprocity.
It is plain that the promise, or extension of responsibility through time,
is what chiefly distinguishes us, I will not say from savages, but from
brutes and reptiles. This was noted by the shrewdness of the Old Testament,
when it summed up the dark irresponsible enormity of Leviathan in the
words, "Will he make a pact with thee?" The promise, like the wheel, is
unknown in Nature: and is the first mark of man. Referring only to human
civilisation, it may be said with seriousness that in the beginning was
the Word. The vow is to the man what the song is to the bird, or the bark
to the dog; his voice, whereby he is known. Just as a man who cannot keep
an appointment is not fit even to fight a duel, so the man who cannot keep
an appointment with himself is not sane enough even for suicide. It is not
easy to mention anything on which the enormous apparatus of human life can
be said to depend. But if it depends on anything, it is on this frail cord,
flung from the forgotten hills of yesterday to the invisible mountains of
to-morrow. On that solitary string hangs everything from Armageddon to an
almanac, from a successful revolution to a return ticket. On that solitary
string the Barbarian is hacking heavily, with a sabre which is fortunately
blunt.
Anyone can see this well enough, merely by reading the last negotiations
between London and Berlin. The Prussians had made a new discovery in
international politics: that it may often be convenient to make a promise;
and yet curiously inconvenient to keep it. They were charmed, in their
simple way, with this scientific discovery, and desired to communicate it
to the world. They therefore promised England a promise, on condition that
she broke a promise, and on the implied condition that the new promise
might be broken as easily as the old one. To the profound astonishment of
Prussia, this reasonable offer was refused! I believe that the astonishment
of Prussia was quite sincere. That is what I mean when I say that the
Barbarian is trying to cut away that cord of honesty and clear record on
which hangs all that men have made.
The friends of the German cause have complained that Asiatics and Africans
upon the very verge of savagery have been brought against them from
India and Algiers. And in ordinary circumstances, I should sympathise
with such a complaint made by a European people. But the circumstances
are not ordinary. Here, again, the quiet unique barbarism of Prussia
goes deeper than what we call barbarities. About mere barbarities, it
is true, the Turco and the Sikh would have a very good reply to the
superior Teuton. The general and just reason for not using non-European
tribes against Europeans is that given by Chatham against the use of the
Red Indian: that such allies might do very diabolical things. But the
poor Turco might not unreasonably ask, after a week-end in Belgium, what
more diabolical things he _could_ do than the highly cultured Germans
were doing themselves. Nevertheless, as I say, the justification of any
extra-European aid goes deeper than any such details. It rests upon
the fact that even other civilisations, even much lower civilisations,
even remote and repulsive civilisations, depend as much as our own on
this primary principle, on which the super-morality of Potsdam declares
open War. Even savages promise things; and respect those who keep their
promises. Even Orientals write things down: and though they write them
from right to left, they know the importance of a scrap of paper. Many
merchants will tell you that the word of the sinister and almost unhuman
Chinaman is often as good as his bond: and it was amid palm trees and
Syrian pavilions that the great utterance opened the tabernacle to him that
sweareth to his hurt and changeth not. There is doubtless a dense labyrinth
of duplicity in the East, and perhaps more guile in the individual Asiatic
than in the individual German. But we are not talking of the violations
of human morality in various parts of the world. We are talking about a
new and inhuman morality, which denies altogether the day of obligation.
The Prussians have been told by their literary men that everything depends
upon Mood: and by their politicians that all arrangements dissolve before
"necessity." That is the importance of the German Chancellor's phrase. He
did not allege some special excuse in the case of Belgium, which might
make it seem an exception that proved the rule. He distinctly argued, as
on a principle applicable to other cases, that victory was a necessity
and honour was a scrap of paper. And it is evident that the half-educated
Prussian imagination really cannot get any farther than this. It cannot
see that if everybody's action were entirely incalculable from hour to
hour, it would not only be the end of all promises, but the end of all
projects. In not being able to see that, the Berlin philosopher is really
on a lower mental level than the Arab who respects the salt, or the Brahmin
who preserves the caste. And in this quarrel we have a right to come with
scimitars as well as sabres, with bows as well as rifles, with assegai
and tomahawk and boomerang, because there is in all these at least a seed
of civilisation that these intellectual anarchists would kill. And if
they should find us in our last stand girt with such strange swords and
following unfamiliar ensigns, and ask us for what we fight in so singular
a company, we shall know what to reply: "We fight for the trust and for
the tryst; for fixed memories and the possible meeting of men; for all
that makes life anything but an uncontrollable nightmare. We fight for the
long arm of honour and remembrance; for all that can lift a man above the
quicksands of his moods, and give him the mastery of time."
II
THE REFUSAL OF RECIPROCITY
In the last summary I suggested that Barbarism, as we mean it, is not mere
ignorance or even mere cruelty. It has a more precise sense, and means
militant hostility to certain necessary human ideas. I took the case of the
vow or the contract, which Prussian intellectualism would destroy. I urged
that the Prussian is a spiritual Barbarian, because he is not bound by his
own past, any more than a man in a dream. He avows that when he promised
to respect a frontier on Monday, he did not foresee what he calls "the
necessity" of not respecting it on Tuesday. In short, he is like a child,
who at the end of all reasonable explanations and reminders of admitted
arrangements has no answer except "But I _want_ to."