The Frivolity of England

New Zealand Tablet, 22 December 1921, Page 11

The Frivolity of England

A few days ago Burgomaster Max, a civilian hero of the war, whom we once glorified like Garibaldi or Gordon, visited and left this country without being noticed save for a line or two in the corners of the newspapers (says the New Witness for September 16). It was impossible to insert more, as there would not have been room for the fifteen portraits of Charlie Chaplin, or the • reproduction of the menu of his meals at the hotel. Only here and there, there creeps into the correspondence column a bitter note; to the effect that Charlie Chaplin was not one of the civilian heroes of the war, or that he was too civilian to be heroic. We have not ourselves any such bitterness on that subject. The comedian is of a type which we always thought it unjust to conscript for the national fights of Christendom; a clever Jew wandering and living on his wits as readily in America as in England; and he at least uses them artistically to amuse people and not financially to fleece them. It is none the less extraordinary that a man of whom such a complaint could ever have been made at all should have a popularity so colossal and free from complaints; and it is still more extraordinary that it should wash away the words of the Great War, which we thought we were graving on a rock, as if it were a wave washing out words traced upon the sand.

The great vice and virtue of the English is frivolity. It is a virtue because it involves many elements of charity and cheerful forgiveness, and a power to survive the mere morbidity of memory. It is a vice because it produces inconstancy and cowardice of the intellect, and an impatience of realities and responsibilities. The Englishman is, always longing to escape into a playground, where antagonisms are not serious and blows do not fester into wounds. That is why he tolerated first the absurd thing called “Party,” and then the more absurd things that were said to be . “Above Party.” That is why he loves the world of sport; because men never need fear to have a quarrel, so long as they will contend without a cause. And that is why his emotions melt naturally into such a world of shadows as the cinematograph; and he can make a hero of a single dancing shadow. In his heart the Englishman would love to live in a world like that of the film, where a man can be kicked downstairs without being hurt; where smashing blows fall without sound or pain, where the comedian still his hat pursues, the comedian and the hat a shade. To love energy without evil is not a small thing; to combine farce with friendship is a contribution to ethics; and the English would have much to say for themselves if they only knew what to say. But when they begin to talk seriously they say all the wrong things; they even tell all the wrong lies. Just as they appear to be tyrants precisely because Imperialism is unsuitable to them, so they appear to be hypocrites precisely because solemnity sits uneasily upon them.

Now we can understand this attitude, and sympathise with it, because being English ourselves we are inside it. But it is none the less necessary to realise sharply what it looks like to the people who are outside it. It is none the less necessary to consider what is said by people of more serious minds, of firmer convictions, and more constant policies; such as the French or the Irish or the Italians or the Poles. These people have their own vices; but they are the vices of tenacity; we might almost say the vices of loyalty. They .are vengeance, morbidity, cruelty 'the vices of the vendetta. But so long as we are content to call these things vices without seeing that they -are also virtues, and content to call our own qualities, virtues without seeing that they are also vices, we shall go deeper and deeper into a very dangerous misunderstanding about our

; preset position in the world. These foreigners doubtless would exaggerate their side of the question,^and do us an injustice in much that they said and thought. But what do wo suppose a really embittered French or Polish patriotviu .1 \j <*• ItSaiijf ciuuiiucidu x' icuou OI i uiiau yauimi: would be tempted to say, or a Belgian who remembers the horrors of tho days when we deified Burgomaster Max, on the mere display. of our illustrated papers? "Yes; I understand you now. You prefer this Jewish buffoon not only to our dead, but to your own. You leave your crippled heroes to rot in unemployment while you run after this vulgar dwarf, and fawn on him for one of his Asiatic smiles. Why indeed should you have any sense of duty towards us, when you have no sense of dignity for yourselves? No wonder you are again hankering after the fleshpots of the barbarians, against whom you fought bravely indeed, but, it would seem, very blindly. No wonder you tolerate and even admire the politicians we only suffer and despise. Since your greatest joy is in such Oriental jugglers, no wonder your statesmanship has become an Oriental jugglery. If Charlie Chaplin is your god, what wonder that Moritz Mond is your king! You know your business best, and your business government; but there is one thing we will not take from them or you, and that is a sermon. We will not be lectured by you, because you are frivolous enough to forget the things you yourselves swore to remember. We will not reverence the fickleness of a rabble as if it were the forgiveness of a saint. Mercy may be better than vengeance; but we do not entertain the smallest doubt that our vengeance is better than your mercy, and even more merciful. Do you ask us to admire the sort of magnanimity that your journalism actually substitutes for the indignation of free men? Pamem et circenses; why should you grumble, slaves, while they give you your Saturnalia?" Now concerning the qualities that go along with frivolity that estimate is unjust; but concerning the frivolity itself, and even the fickleness itself, it is true. We have not really even changed our mind; we have only changed our mood. We have not really altered our judgment of the Germans, or in other words our judgment of the facts. v Captain Fryatt is still dead; he did not come to life again when the diplomatists came to Versailles.' The hospital ships are still at the bottom of the sea; they did not rise again on Armistice Day like the dead on Resurrection Day. We have only allowed the Germans to show, in a series of sham trials, how ardently they approve of things like the murder of Fryatt and the firing on the Red Cross. We are not converted on the question; we are merely tired v of the subject. We ignore these facts, not because they are no longer facts, but because they are no longer news. And the spirit that % can only be concerned with facts when they are also news is a frivolous and even a fickle spirit. It may coexist with many virtues, but it is in this relation not only a vice but a weakness. As long as these facts - remain, another and enormous fact remains: the presence of barbarism and the peril of civilisation. The French in founding their arguments and actions on this are building upon a rock of reality, while we are trying to build upon tho turning tides of mere topic and fashion. It is as if an Anglo-Indian gentleman should deduce from the fact that he was tired of tiger-hunting that tigers were no longer dangerous; for a man who had dropped his hobby of entomology were to put his nose into a nest of wasps. We may like or dislike the French, we may understand or misunderstand them; but it is just as true as it.ever was that France is the key-fortress of historic civilisation ; and that Europe is broken asunder if that central fortress falls. We may honestly think that the French are too fierce and vindictive; but upon any argument vengeance is more virtuous than aggression, and ferocity that is retributive better than ferocity that is wanton. If we ally ourselves again with the barbarians, we shall ally ourselves with s wanton ferocity and aggressive war. We may have many healthy and humane feelings in the matter; but what France is and what Germany is are facts, and unaffected by what England feels. These objective things cannot alter with what Matthew Arnold called long ago "the hot fits and cold fits of the British Philistine." As he said, we . must not be content with picking up and putting down ideas as if they were counters especially as in this case our r counters are other people's coins. :;\ The beauty of Poland may be as much a matter of taste as the playing of Paderewski; and there.are doubtless

many who prefer the acting of "Charlie Chaplin. But the act that Poland lies between Prussianism and Bolshevism, holding them apart, is not a matter of taste, but a matter of fact; and the strengthening of Poland is. therefore a matter of necessity. Jews may bo as charming as most people find Charlie Chaplin, or as undesirable as we find Moritz Mond. But the fact that Jews generally hate Poles, and tend by their policy to destroy Poland, is not a matter of desire or charm; it is a. matter of experience; and it is suicidal to allow our moods to falsify our experiences. Our own cheerful desire to change the subject cannot alter the actualities of what things are and' where they are. It cannot alter our knowledge of where the Poles are; which is between Prussian organisation and Russian disorganisation. It cannot alter our knowledge of where the Jews are; which is at the head of Russian anarchy and also of English government. This situation is equally serious and obvious however lightly we take it; and we would rather be with the mob raving over a cosmopolitan comedian than with a minority which sneers at the cosmopolitan comedian without daring to murmur against the cosmopolitan financier who is preparing for us not comedy but tragedy. ■ ❖<><>