The Barbarism of Berlin by G. K. Chesterton
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G. K. Chesterton >> The Barbarism of Berlin
There is another idea in human arrangements so fundamental as to be
forgotten; but now for the first time denied. It may be called the idea
of reciprocity; or, in better English, of give and take. The Prussian
appears to be quite intellectually incapable of this thought. He cannot,
I think, conceive the idea that is the foundation of all comedy; that, in
the eyes of the other man, he is only the other man. And if we carry this
clue through the institutions of Prussianised Germany, we shall find how
curiously his mind has been limited in the matter. The German differs from
other patriots in the inability to understand patriotism. Other European
peoples pity the Poles or the Welsh for their violated borders; but Germans
only pity themselves. They might take forcible possession of the Severn or
the Danube, of the Thames or the Tiber, of the Garry or the Garonne--and
they would still be singing sadly about how fast and true stands the watch
on Rhine; and what a shame it would be if anyone took their own little
river away from them. That is what I mean by not being reciprocal: and you
will find it in all that they do: as in all that is done by savages.
Here, again, it is very necessary to avoid confusing this soul of the
savage with mere savagery in the sense of brutality or butchery; in which
the Greeks, the French and all the most civilised nations have indulged in
hours of abnormal panic or revenge. Accusations of cruelty are generally
mutual. But it is the point about the Prussian that with him nothing is
mutual. The definition of the true savage does not concern itself even with
how much more he hurts strangers or captives than do the other tribes of
men. The definition of the true savage is that he laughs when he hurts you;
and howls when you hurt him. This extraordinary inequality in the mind is
in every act and word that comes from Berlin. For instance, no man of the
world believes all he sees in the newspapers; and no journalist believes a
quarter of it. We should, therefore, be quite ready in the ordinary way to
take a great deal off the tales of German atrocities; to doubt this story
or deny that. But there is one thing that we cannot doubt or deny: the seal
and authority of the Emperor. In the Imperial proclamation the fact that
certain "frightful" things have been done is admitted; and justified on
the ground of their frightfulness. It was a military necessity to terrify
the peaceful populations with something that was not civilised, something
that was hardly human. Very well. That is an intelligible policy: and in
that sense an intelligible argument. An army endangered by foreigners
may do the most frightful things. But then we turn the next page of the
Kaiser's public diary, and we find him writing to the President of the
United States, to complain that the English are using dum-dum bullets
and violating various regulations of the Hague Conference. I pass for
the present the question of whether there is a word of truth in these
charges. I am content to gaze rapturously at the blinking eyes of the True,
or Positive, Barbarian. I suppose he would be quite puzzled if we said that
violating the Hague Conference was "a military necessity" to us; or that
the rules of the Conference were only a scrap of paper. He would be quite
pained if we said that dum-dum bullets, "by their very frightfulness,"
would be very useful to keep conquered Germans in order. Do what he will,
he cannot get outside the idea that he, because he is he and not you, is
free to break the law; and also to appeal to the law. It is said that the
Prussian officers play at a game called Kriegsspiel, or the War Game. But
in truth they could not play at any game; for the essence of every game is
that the rules are the same on both sides.
But taking every German institution in turn, the case is the same; and
it is not a case of mere bloodshed or military bravado. The duel, for
example, can legitimately be called a barbaric thing; but the word is
here used in another sense. There are duels in Germany; but so there are
in France, Italy, Belgium and Spain; indeed, there are duels wherever
there are dentists, newspapers, Turkish baths, time-tables, and all the
curses of civilisation; except in England and a corner of America. You
may happen to regard the duel as an historic relic of the more barbaric
States on which these modern States were built. It might equally well be
maintained that the duel is everywhere the sign of high civilisation;
being the sign of its more delicate sense of honour, its more vulnerable
vanity, or its greater dread of social disrepute. But whichever of the two
views you take, you must concede that the essence of the duel is an armed
equality. I should not, therefore, apply the word barbaric, as I am using
it, to the duels of German officers or even to the broadsword combats
that are conventional among the German students. I do not see why a young
Prussian should not have scars all over his face if he likes them; nay,
they are often the redeeming points of interest on an otherwise somewhat
unenlightening countenance. The duel may be defended; the sham duel may be
defended.
What cannot be defended is something really peculiar to Prussia, of which
we hear numberless stories, some of them certainly true. It might be called
the one-sided duel. I mean the idea that there is some sort of dignity
in drawing the sword upon a man who has not got a sword; a waiter, or a
shop assistant, or even a schoolboy. One of the officers of the Kaiser
in the affair at Saberne was found industriously hacking at a cripple. In
all these matters I would avoid sentiment. We must not lose our tempers
at the mere cruelty of the thing; but pursue the strict psychological
distinction. Others besides German soldiers have slain the defenceless,
for loot or lust or private malice, like any other murderer. The point is
that nowhere else but in Prussian Germany is any theory of honour mixed
up with such things; any more than with poisoning or picking pockets. No
French, English, Italian or American gentleman would think he had in some
way cleared his own character by sticking his sabre through some ridiculous
greengrocer who had nothing in his hand but a cucumber. It would seem as if
the word which is translated from the German as "honour," must really mean
something quite different in German. It seems to mean something more like
what we should call "prestige."
The fundamental fact, however, is the absence of the reciprocal idea. The
Prussian is not sufficiently civilised for the duel. Even when he crosses
swords with us his thoughts are not as our thoughts; when we both glorify
war, we are glorifying different things. Our medals are wrought like his,
but they do not mean the same thing; our regiments are cheered as his are,
but the thought in the heart is not the same; the Iron Cross is on the
bosom of his king, but it is not the sign of our God. For we, alas, follow
our God with many relapses and self-contradictions, but he follows his very
consistently. Through all the things that we have examined, the view of
national boundaries, the view of military methods, the view of personal
honour and self-defence, there runs in their case something of an atrocious
simplicity; something too simple for us to understand: the idea that glory
consists in holding the steel, and not in facing it.
If further examples were necessary, it would be easy to give hundreds
of them. Let us leave, for the moment, the relation between man and man
in the thing called the duel. Let us take the relation between man and
woman, in that immortal duel which we call a marriage. Here again we shall
find that other Christian civilisations aim at some kind of equality;
even if the balance be irrational or dangerous. Thus, the two extremes
of the treatment of women might be represented by what are called the
respectable classes in America and in France. In America they choose the
risk of comradeship; in France the compensation of courtesy. In America it
is practically possible for any young gentleman to take any young lady for
what he calls (I deeply regret to say) a joyride; but at least the man goes
with the woman as much as the woman with the man. In France the young woman
is protected like a nun while she is unmarried; but when she is a mother
she is really a holy woman; and when she is a grandmother she is a holy
terror. By both extremes the woman gets something back out of life. There
is only one place where she gets little or nothing back; and that is the
north of Germany. France and America aim alike at equality--America by
similarity; France by dissimilarity. But North Germany does definitely
aim at inequality. The woman stands up, with no more irritation than a
butler; the man sits down, with no more embarrassment than a guest. This is
the cool affirmation of inferiority, as in the case of the sabre and the
tradesman. "Thou goest with women; forget not thy whip," said Nietzsche.
It will be observed that he does not say "poker"; which might come more
naturally to the mind of a more common or Christian wife-beater. But then
a poker is a part of domesticity; and might be used by the wife as well as
the husband. In fact, it often, is. The sword and the whip are the weapons
of a privileged caste.
Pass from the closest of all differences, that between husband and wife,
to the most distant of all differences, that of the remote and unrelated
races who have seldom seen each other's faces, and never been tinged
with each other's blood. Here we still find the same unvarying Prussian
principle. Any European might feel a genuine fear of the Yellow Peril; and
many Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Russians have felt and expressed it. Many
might say, and have said, that the Heathen Chinee is very heathen indeed;
that if he ever advances against us he will trample and torture and utterly
destroy, in a way that Eastern people do, but Western people do not. Nor do
I doubt the German Emperor's sincerity when he sought to point out to us
how abnormal and abominable such a nightmare campaign would be, supposing
that it could ever come. But now comes the comic irony; which never fails
to follow on the attempt of the Prussian to be philosophic. For the Kaiser,
after explaining to his troops how important it was to avoid Eastern
Barbarism, instantly commanded them to become Eastern Barbarians. He told
them, in so many words, to be Huns: and leave nothing living or standing
behind them. In fact, he frankly offered a new army corps of aboriginal
Tartars to the Far East, within such time as it may take a bewildered
Hanoverian to turn into a Tartar. Anyone who has the painful habit of
personal thought will perceive here at once the non-reciprocal principle
again. Boiled down to its bones of logic, it means simply this: "I am a
German and you are a Chinaman. Therefore I, being a German, have a right
to be a Chinaman. But you have no right to be a Chinaman; because you
are only a Chinaman." This is probably the highest point to which German
culture has risen.
The principle here neglected, which may be called Mutuality by those who
misunderstand and dislike the word Equality, does not offer so clear a
distinction between the Prussian and the other peoples as did the first
Prussian principle of an infinite and destructive opportunism; or, in
other words, the principle of being unprincipled. Nor upon this second
can one take up so obvious a position touching the other civilisations or
semi-civilisations of the world. Some idea of oath and bond there is in the
rudest tribes, in the darkest continents. But it might be maintained, of
the more delicate and imaginative element of reciprocity, that a cannibal
in Borneo understands it almost as little as a professor in Berlin. A
narrow and one-sided seriousness is the fault of barbarians all over the
world. This may have been the meaning, for aught I know, of the one eye of
the Cyclops: that the Barbarian cannot see round things or look at them
from two points of view; and thus becomes a blind beast and an eater of
men. Certainly there can be no better summary of the savage than this,
which, as we have seen, unfits him for the duel. He is the man who cannot
love--no, nor even hate--his neighbour as himself.
But this quality in Prussia does have one effect which has reference
to the same quest of the lower civilisations. It disposes once and
for all at least of the civilising mission of Germany. Evidently the
Germans are the last people in the world to be trusted with the task. They
are as shortsighted morally as physically. What is their sophism of
"necessity" but an inability to imagine to-morrow morning? What is their
non-reciprocity but an inability to imagine, not a god or devil, but
merely another man? Are these to judge mankind? Men of two tribes in
Africa not only know that they are all men, but can understand that they
are all black men. In this they are quite seriously in advance of the
intellectual Prussian; who cannot be got to see that we are all white
men. The ordinary eye is unable to perceive in the North-East Teuton,
anything that marks him out especially from the more colourless classes of
the rest of Aryan mankind. He is simply a white man, with a tendency to
the grey or the drab. Yet he will explain, in serious official documents,
that the difference between him and us is a difference between "the
master-race and the inferior-race." The collapse of German philosophy
always occurs at the beginning, rather than the end of an argument; and the
difficulty here is that there is no way of testing which is a master-race
except by asking which is your own race. If you cannot find out (as is
usually the case) you fall back on the absurd occupation of writing history
about prehistoric times. But I suggest quite seriously that if the Germans
can give their philosophy to the Hottentots, there is no reason why they
should not give their sense of superiority to the Hottentots. If they can
see such fine shades between the Goth and the Gaul, there is no reason why
similar shades should not lift the savage above other savages; why any
Ojibway should not discover that he is one tint redder than the Dacotahs;
or any nigger in the Cameroons say he is not so black as he is painted. For
this principle of a quite unproved racial supremacy is the last and worst
of the refusals of reciprocity. The Prussian calls all men to admire the
beauty of his large blue eyes. If they do, it is because they have inferior
eyes: if they don't, it is because they have no eyes.
Wherever the most miserable remnant of our race, astray and dried up in
deserts, or buried for ever under the fall of bad civilisations, has some
feeble memory that men are men, that bargains are bargains, that there are
two sides to a question, or even that it takes two to make a quarrel--that
remnant has the right to resist the New Culture, to the knife and club
and the splintered stone. For the Prussian begins all his culture by that
act which is the destruction of all creative thought and constructive
action. He breaks that mirror in the mind, in which a man can see the face
of his friend and foe.
III
THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY
The German Emperor has reproached this country with allying itself with
"barbaric and semi-oriental power." We have already considered in what
sense we use the word barbaric: it is in the sense of one who is hostile
to civilisation, not one who is insufficient in it. But when we pass from
the idea of the barbaric to the idea of the oriental, the case is even
more curious. There is nothing particularly Tartar in Russian affairs,
except the fact that Russia expelled the Tartars. The eastern invader
occupied and crushed the country for many years; but that is equally true
of Greece, of Spain, and even of Austria. If Russia has suffered from the
East she has suffered in order to resist it: and it is rather hard that
the very miracle of her escape should make a mystery about her origin.
Jonah may or may not have been three days inside a fish, but that does
not make him a merman. And in all the other cases of European nations who
escaped the monstrous captivity, we do admit the purity and continuity
of the European type. We consider the old Eastern rule as a wound, but
not as a stain. Copper-coloured men out of Africa overruled for centuries
the religion and patriotism of Spaniards. Yet I have never heard that
Don Quixote was an African fable on the lines of Uncle Remus. I have
never heard that the heavy black in the pictures of Velasquez was due
to a negro ancestry. In the case of Spain, which is close to us, we can
recognise the resurrection of a Christian and cultured nation after its
age of bondage. But Russia is rather remote; and those to whom nations are
but names in newspapers can really fancy, like Mr. Baring's friend, that
all Russian churches are "mosques." Yet the land of Turgeniev is not a
wilderness of fakirs; and even the fanatical Russian is as proud of being
different from the Mongol, as the fanatical Spaniard was proud of being
different from the Moor.
The town of Reading, as it exists, offers few opportunities for piracy
on the high seas: yet it was the camp of the pirates in Alfred's day. I
should think it hard to call the people of Berkshire half-Danish, merely
because they drove out the Danes. In short, some temporary submergence
under the savage flood was the fate of many of the most civilised states
of Christendom; and it is quite ridiculous to argue that Russia, which
wrestled hardest, must have recovered least. Everywhere, doubtless, the
East spread a sort of enamel over the conquered countries, but everywhere
the enamel cracked. Actual history, in fact, is exactly opposite to
the cheap proverb invented against the Muscovite. It is not true to
say "Scratch a Russian and you find a Tartar." In the darkest hour of
the barbaric dominion it was truer to say, "Scratch a Tartar and you
find a Russian." It was the civilisation that survived under all the
barbarism. This vital romance of Russia, this revolution against Asia, can
be proved in pure fact; not only from the almost superhuman activity of
Russia during the struggle, but also (which is much rarer as human history
goes) by her quite consistent conduct since. She is the only great nation
which has really expelled the Mongol from her country, and continued to
protest against the presence of the Mongol in her continent. Knowing
what he had been in Russia, she knew what he would be in Europe. In
this she pursued a logical line of thought, which was, if anything, too
unsympathetic with the energies and religions of the East. Every other
country, one may say, has been an ally of the Turk; that is, of the Mongol
and the Moslem. The French played them as pieces against Austria; the
English warmly supported them under the Palmerston regime; even the young
Italians sent troops to the Crimea; and of Prussia and her Austrian vassal
it is nowadays needless to speak. For good or evil, it is the fact of
history that Russia is the only Power in Europe that has never supported
the Crescent against the Cross.
That, doubtless, will appear an unimportant matter; but it may become
important under certain peculiar conditions. Suppose, for the sake
of argument, that there were a powerful prince in Europe who had gone
ostentatiously out of his way to pay reverence to the remains of the
Tartar, Mongol and Moslem, which are left as outposts in Europe. Suppose
there were a Christian Emperor who could not even go to the tomb of
the Crucified, without pausing to congratulate the last and living
crucifier. If there were an Emperor who gave guns and guides and maps and
drill instructors to defend the remains of the Mongol in Christendom, what
should we say to him? I think at least we might ask him what he meant by
his impudence, when he talked about supporting a semi-oriental power. That
we support a semi-oriental power we deny. That he has supported an entirely
oriental power cannot be denied--no, not even by the man who did it.
But here is to be noted the essential difference between Russia and
Prussia; especially by those who use the ordinary Liberal arguments
against the latter. Russia has a policy which she pursues, if you will,
through evil and good; but at least so as to produce good as well as
evil. Let it be granted that the policy has made her oppressive to the
Finns and the Poles--though the Russian Poles feel far less oppressed than
do the Prussian Poles. But it is a mere historic fact, that if Russia
has been a despot to some small nations, she has been a deliverer to
others. She did, so far as in her lay, emancipate the Servians and the
Montenegrins. But whom did Prussia ever emancipate--even by accident? It
is indeed somewhat extraordinary that in the perpetual permutations of
international politics, the Hohenzollerns have never gone astray into the
path of enlightenment. They have been in alliance with almost everybody
off and on: with France, with England, with Austria, with Russia. Can
anyone candidly say that they have left on any one of these people the
faintest impress of progress or liberation? Prussia was the enemy of the
French Monarchy; but a worse enemy of the French Revolution. Prussia had
been an enemy of the Czar; but she was a worse enemy of the Duma. Prussia
totally disregarded Austrian rights: but she is to-day quite ready to
inflict Austrian wrongs. This is the strong particular difference between
the one empire and the other. Russia is pursuing certain intelligible and
sincere ends, which to her at least are ideals, and for which, therefore,
she will make sacrifices and will protect the weak. But the North German
soldier is a sort of abstract tyrant, everywhere and always on the side of
materialistic tyranny. This Teuton in uniform has been found in strange
places; shooting farmers before Saratoga and flogging soldiers in Surrey,
hanging niggers in Africa and raping girls in Wicklow; but never, by some
mysterious fatality, lending a hand to the freeing of a single city or the
independence of one solitary flag. Wherever scorn and prosperous oppression
are, there is the Prussian; unconsciously consistent, instinctively
restrictive, innocently evil; "following darkness like a dream."
Suppose we heard of a person (gifted with some longevity) who had helped
Alva to persecute Dutch Protestants, then helped Cromwell to persecute
Irish Catholics, and then helped Claverhouse to persecute Scotch Puritans,
we should find it rather easier to call him a persecutor than to call
him a Protestant or a Catholic. Curiously enough this is actually the
position in which the Prussian stands in Europe. No argument can alter
the fact that in three converging and conclusive cases, he has been on
the side of three distinct rulers of different religions, who had nothing
whatever in common except that they were ruling oppressively. In these
three Governments, taken separately, one can see something excusable or at
least human. When the Kaiser encouraged the Russian rulers to crush the
Revolution, the Russian rulers undoubtedly believed they were wrestling
with an inferno of atheism and anarchy. A Socialist of the ordinary English
kind cried out upon me when I spoke of Stolypin, and said he was chiefly
known by the halter called "Stolypin's Necktie." As a fact, there were many
other things interesting about Stolypin besides his necktie: his policy of
peasant proprietorship, his extraordinary personal courage, and certainly
none more interesting than that movement in his death agony, when he made
the sign of the cross towards the Czar, as the crown and captain of his
Christianity. But the Kaiser does not regard the Czar as the captain of
Christianity. Far from it. What he supported in Stolypin was the necktie
and nothing but the necktie: the gallows and not the cross. The Russian
ruler did believe that the Orthodox Church was orthodox. The Austrian
Archduke did really desire to make the Catholic Church catholic. He did
really believe that he was being Pro-Catholic in being Pro-Austrian. But
the Kaiser cannot be Pro-Catholic, and therefore cannot have been really
Pro-Austrian, he was simply and solely Anti-Servian. Nay, even in the cruel
and sterile strength of Turkey, anyone with imagination can see something
of the tragedy and therefore of the tenderness of true belief. The worst
that can be said of the Moslems is, as the poet put it, they offered to
man the choice of the Koran or the sword. The best that can be said for
the German is that he does not care about the Koran, but is satisfied if
he can have the sword. And for me, I confess, even the sins of these three
other striving empires take on, in comparison, something that is sorrowful
and dignified: and I feel they do not deserve that this little Lutheran
lounger should patronise all that is evil in them, while ignoring all that
is good. He is not Catholic, he is not Orthodox, he is not Mahomedan. He
is merely an old gentleman who wishes to share the crime though he cannot
share the creed. He desires to be a persecutor by the pang without the
palm. So strongly do all the instincts of the Prussian drive against
liberty, that he would rather oppress other people's subjects than think
of anybody going without the benefits of oppression. He is a sort of
disinterested despot. He is as disinterested as the devil who is ready to
do anyone's dirty work.