WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT A MAN ?

Otago Witness, Issue 3197, 23 June 1915, Page 72

WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT A MAN ?

By Jessie Mackat,

There is one pre-eminent prerent hope for the sickness of the body politic, and it lies in the speed of modern diagnosis. Once the half of a continent could be devastated for half a century without finding out what radically ailed" it. Some particular Napoleon or some particular band of barbarians was plainly the immediate cause of disaster; but" why precipitated or why invincible the dim mediaeval mind could offer no reason, though it c'ould always muster a superstition. Since then the historic method has been born. We live history; we breathe history; we forecast history. Scarcely has the thing that comes to pass emerged from the limbo of the unborn ere it is hailed, triumphed, judged, clothed upon, and correlated by ten thousand tongues and pens. Even the secret treaties, the hushed-up grafts and scandals to which Authority in her stolid Nelsonian way turns her blind eye are not really hidden. Some sharp little weasel of a Labour paper, some curve-billed huia of a woman’s paper will presently have the thing out of its official hiding hole into the sun. We have only to put our ear to tire cosmic receiver to hear all that flies along the line f?om Dan. to Beersheba. Above all this new historic consciousness differs from the old in that it aims at tire psychological side of current events. Its mark may be wide, its method empiric, but it aims beyond the crassly material.

Even at death-grips the world is held by a gigantic study in psychology. It is an intensely mediaeval spectacle when all is done—the veritable case of a nation that sold its soul to the devil for wealth and power and place. That is what Prussia has done, and Germany in so far as she has accepted the intellectual hegemony of Piussia. It is a spectacle unique, on which the whole limelight of civilised regard is now turned with a creepy wonder, as on some gigantic Larnia caught in the transformation from woman to serpent. We thought we knew Germany — a nation of philosophers, whose profundity boxed us; of megalomaniacs, whose assurance amused us; of mechanics, whoso alert efficiency struck us hard in the pocket nerve, and Teutonic cousins, whose goodfellowship always found its mark. What poppy juice was in our eyes that we did not detect the transformation of Goethe’s vine-clad Germany into this vast Hall of Eblis, filled with unblest treasures and the dead and evil eyes of perished kings set in a dreadful stare? For three-a.nd-forty years Germany as an Empire has been walking “ withershins” and saying the Black Paternoster. True, it is not Prussia that has been selling her soul. Prussia had no soul to sell. But Germany at large had a soul—a dreamy, biddable soul—to be trafficked' away in the true robber-spirit of the Hohenzoilerns. For a modern philippic there is nothing more stirring than Cecil Chesterton’s boox, “The Prussian Hath Said in His Heart.” The historic setting is strong; the fire of denunciation is fed with f act; the refrain comes in with' rhythmic intensity, “Prussia must be crushed!” As the tale proceeds we see the- spirit of Prussia, predatory, unprincipled, cunning as a Troll, incarnating as Frederick the Great. Curious how men have applied that title to the devastators-- of Jhistory—Alexander, Peter, Frederick. Once only the title was given to a constructor and a benefactor among kings—-English Alfred. Between the “greatness” of Alfred and of Frederick what an abysmal difference! Alfred fought for a people’s freedom; Frederick fought and caballed alternately that many peoples might be enslaved. Alfred was the friend of good women and the champion of conscience; Frederick, without a genuine human emotion, is most himself in his victory over Maria Theresa’s conscience when he dragged Austria into the first partition of Poland with the satanic chuckle, “ I wonder how that old woman fixed it up with her confessor! Alfred lived for his people; Frederick lived upon his people. Alfred gave England the true essentials ..of education; Frederick stuffed Prussia with the mouldy hay of mediaeval dogma to keep the people dull and obedient. Alfred lived in the sight and fear of God; Frederick was a thinly-veneered pagan, who said “Religion was made to deceive men.” Yet this Frederick, prototype of the German Superman, impressed himself on Prussia like a die on soft wax. And he set the great wheels of Prussian diplomacy to grind out death, as the Norse Queen of Plenty ground out gold, and the Sampo of Finnish legend ground corn and money unceasingly.' The spirit of Frederick survived the Napoleonic cataclysm, lying latent till Bismarck revived it* again, against the rising powers _ of federation and democracy.* The triumph of Bismarck at the gates of Paris in 1870 left France chastened and human, Germany grandiloquent and “ fey.” Thereafter, three-and-forty years of hhe Black Paternoster and riches that rang hard as iron in exchange for the soul of the new Empire. There are even now a few cool spirits for whom Cecil Chesterton’s fiery philippic is too specious or too sweeping. But these can take the same moral out of the studiously moderate and reasoned “ Armageddon and After” of Clondesley Breroton, published late last year. Out of this quiet array of facts rises the same singular picture of a nation that has lost its soul and gained the wealth and driving power of the material earth. It seems never to have been said of Germany that its religion was that of the Demiurge of later Greek fancy—the great, unmoral, unspiritual Force, maker and temporary prince of this untoward earth, not yet ready for God. The whole of Germany since 1870 might, however, be deemed a wordless Avorship of that Demiurge, plucked out of the sky to remake a world with Germany on top, her culture, type, and dominion supreme throughout. The

Germanic mind, intensely active, mechanically concentmtive, and wholly selfcentred, has drawn a ring round Germany, through which ideas may not penetrate. By complete bureaucratic control of press, Church, and Parliament, and a complete subversion of civil rights, activities, and needs to the supreme military idea, Germany has given up piece by piece her national soul, and gained something which almost rivals the achieved dream of the builders of Babel. As Mr Brereton says, “The German people have therefore been living in a vicious circle, unable to criticise their own Government and its institutions at borne, and surrounded by a Chinese wall of ignorance and conceit which cuts them off from foreign criticism.” In a word, the German has lost, as a German, the power of psychologic diagnosis, pursued more or less earnestly in other modern countries, and has abjured the salutary exercise of the historic method. (To be concluded.)