Part 31

But the first added: "We must remain neutral--that is our one and only duty. The more malevolent our neutrality the better, but it must be neutrality. Remember that there are Germans whose bitterness prompts them to wish that British troops were marching through the streets of Berlin. I think their wish is juster than yours, but both wishes cannot be fulfilled, and it is therefore desirable that the next best thing should happen, namely, that both the Allies and their enemies should be entirely deprived of victory."

I agreed, but added:

"Yes, fundamentally one must remain neutral, but in relation to present circumstances one cannot remain neutral. It is our business to arraign England, our own country, and not Germany. It is for every nation to discover its own faults. There are many Germans of courage and honesty who will condemn their country for the crimes she has committed. But condemnation from outside is useless and is always discredited. In all probability the Allies and the Central Powers are both equally bad, and to denounce the enemy only is mere yelping with the rest of the savage, vindictive pack."

"That is true, but what is the good of saying it, or thinking it! Ignorance, prejudice, and intellectual dishonesty are far stronger than you are. The depravity of mankind is such that only failure and humiliation will carry conviction. Mere words are only wasted. If any nation is completely defeated in this war, then its people will rise against its rulers, whether they are guilty or not, and they will fix all the responsibility of war upon them and upon themselves. There will be a frenzy of self-accusation--whether just or unjust it doesn't matter--and as for the victors, they will say: 'Our enemies admit their guilt, so what further proof is needed?' Where the real guilt is, that is an irrelevant and trivial question. Success or failure will be the sole ultimate criterion. There is only one hope for the world--that failure will be so evenly distributed that there will be anxious heart-searchings in every country. Failure alone makes ignorant people think. Success is taken for granted. Even after a single battle lost, the Press is full of explanations and excuses, but after a battle won, there is only complacency and self-glorification, and questions as to the why and wherefore are considered out of place or even treasonable."

When we parted I was seized with a feeling of intense loneliness, but nevertheless I realized with satisfaction that I was not entirely alone. I also gave up the idea of enjoying my leave and conceived a deep aversion for all pleasures and amusements.

The next day I wandered into the British Museum. The 600,000 volumes that surrounded me on the shelves of the reading-room had a depressing effect. I took out a few books, but was too distracted for serious study.

I almost smiled with self-contempt when I thought how I had set out the previous morning in order to conquer my old world, and how it was now receding further and further from me. I looked at the other readers. They were mostly old men, engrossed in their studies, just as they had been in peace time. I wondered what they thought about the war. I knew they would not allow it to disturb them much or interfere with their studies and their sleep. And after all, why should they care? It was only youth that was being slaughtered on the battlefields and not old age.

The sleepy dullness of the museum became unbearable and I walked out into the street.

I spent the evening with a member of the National Liberal Club, an intimate family friend, whose intellectual arrogance was one of the evil memories of my childhood, when many eager impulses and aspirations had been turned to bitterness by his lofty depreciation and his imperturbable assumption of superiority based on maturer years and experience. Having at different times received material kindnesses at his hands, I knew I could not tell him what I really thought, and the prospect of meeting him filled me with uneasiness. Moreover, in his presence I felt a kind of pride which I did not usually feel in the presence of others--a pride that forbade me to express any sentiment or to reveal my inner mind. And yet my inner mind was clamouring intolerably for revelation. I realized the advantage he would derive from his simple attitude and from his lack of mental integrity, which enabled him to ignore any considerations that did not conform to his preconceived notions, and I realized the disadvantage of my complex attitude, made up as it was of so many conflicting impulses, at war with each other and with the world around me.

My fears were justified.

At first the conversation was commonplace, and I related various experiences in a desultory fashion. Those that were mildly amusing were most appreciated. But gradually we drifted towards more vital issues and then the long and futile argument began. The weapons of sarcasm and denunciation were denied to me by the laws of politeness and etiquette. I beat in vain against the solid walls of obstinate prejudice and superficiality. His statements were uttered with dogmatic emphasis. They expressed beliefs held with all the self-assurance born of ignorance. They were based on no independent reasoning or observation, but had been assimilated either directly from the daily Press or from a circle of acquaintances whose entire political outlook was the creation of the Press. It was only then that I realized the immense power of newspapers.

For most people "thinking" is just the discovery of convenient phrases or labels, such as "pessimist," or "socialist," or "pacifist" or "Bolshevik." When any puzzling mental attitude comes before their notice, they pin one of their labels to it, and, having labelled it, they think they understand it. The Press supplies them with these labels, and, consciously or unconsciously, they store them up in their minds and always have a few ready for immediate use.

So familiar and commonplace were the phrases which my opponent selected from his store in order to reply to my every utterance, that I could almost tell what he was going to say before he said it. Moreover, the fact that he had travelled abroad and had associated with foreigners, instead of widening his view had only narrowed it. Had he never travelled he might have been sufficiently modest to admit that he knew nothing of foreign countries and he might have suspended judgment about them; but the mere fact that he had travelled filled him with a deep conviction that he knew all about the places he had visited, and this conviction, enunciated with pompous emphasis, supplanted the real knowledge and understanding derived from honest observation. Like so many people who do not possess the faculty of experiencing, he continually appealed to his own experience and continually referred to his maturer years, as though old age of itself brought wisdom.

As for the war itself he took no deep interest in it, although he glanced at the war news every day. But to understand it, to analyse its causes, to grasp its significance, to realize its true nature, that he never attempted to do. His labels and his alleged experiences and his years were sufficient to cope with the entire question and answer it satisfactorily for himself. I almost envied him for his self-sufficiency. He would never suffer acutely from any mental strife or agitation due to any but immediate and personal causes. Perhaps such a stable mentality that can without effort reject all inconvenient data is the most desirable of all and the most conducive to happiness. Certain it is that the stability of society and the very existence of civilization itself depend upon the preponderance of that particular type.

I knew that the argument was hopeless. Indeed, it was no argument. It was no exchange of ideas. It was no mutual attempt at discovering truths by an impartial comparison of two different attitudes.

At times there were signs of heat on both sides. My opponent spoke of "our democratic army" (familiar phrase!) and the overbearing manner in which he connected this dictum with a number of false, irrelevant or arbitrary generalizations made me feel a momentary pang of anger and I wished he could experience a term of military service. Nevertheless, there was no actual display of bad temper or emotion and we parted with all the habitual formulae imposed by social decorum.

I knew I had come into contact with the truly representative man. His opinion and the opinions of those like him, they all made up popular opinion. All other opinion was abnormal and negligible. It was with despair that I realized the hopelessness of my own position and that of my friends.

The public did not understand the war and did not want to understand it. It was far away from them and they did not realize the amount of suffering caused by it. It also brought wealth to many who would therefore have regretted its sudden termination. This seems a hard thing to say, but nevertheless it is true. The so-called "working-classes" had developed an appetite for wealth and power that nothing could satisfy. This appetite was being fed continually, but the more it devoured the more voracious it became. Nor did the shameless profiteering of the wealthy tend to allay it in any way. Protests against the war never went beyond the passing of mere resolutions. Those who had sufficient humanity and imagination to hate the war in its entirety and to suffer from it, although not necessarily taking any part in it, were too few and too scattered and isolated to take any effective action.

The extent to which a man can suffer is the precise measure of his merit, and thus it was that our patriots and war-enthusiasts being incapable, by reason of their grossness and vulgarity, of suffering in a spiritual sense, were immune from the misery caused by the war and yet it was they above all others upon whose support the continuance of the war depended.

This was the terrible fatality. The more a man suffered from the war the smaller was his control over it.

Everywhere, those who deserved to suffer did not suffer and those who did not deserve to suffer suffered. And that was why the war went on. Most people were so indifferent that it was impossible to talk to them without anger. I could think of nothing else but the war. I could not escape from its invisible presence. The streets and houses seemed the immaterial creations of some dream, and somewhere behind them the slaughter was going on, and amid the noise of the traffic the throbbing of the bombardment was plainly audible.

Sometimes I felt an impulse to shout from the house-tops like a Hebrew prophet and denounce this most wicked of generations. But the very futility of the idea filled me with mortification.

Our enlightened twentieth century has no use for prophets. Christ Himself would have been arrested as a pacifist or a lunatic if He had spoken His mind in the streets of London. And the clergy would have applauded the imprisonment of a dangerous "pro-German." The scribes and Pharisees were more numerous and more powerful than ever before.

Particularly the scribes.

There never was in all the world an infamy as great as the infamy of our war-time Press. A horde of unscrupulous liars and hirelings spat hatred and malice from safe and comfortable positions. They played the hero when no danger threatened. They defied an enemy who could not reach them. They boasted of the deeds they had not done. They gloried in the victories they did not win. They mouthed frantic protestations of injured innocence when they should have felt the burden of guilty shame. They were mawkishly sentimental when they should have felt keen grief and horror. They denounced murder and they urged others to commit murder. They spewed their venomous slime into every spring of healing water. At a time when clear thinking and balanced judgments were needed more desperately than ever before, they squirted into the air thick clouds of lies, and half-truths, and misleading phrases, and judgments distorted by hatred and warped by malice. And as for those who were either lured on to perpetrate the great iniquity by grandiose and seductive falsehoods or were dragged from their homes and families and sent unwilling to the slaughter, these miserable slaves the Press of all countries urged on, one against the other, brutally deaf to their misery, representing them as glad and cheerful when they had reached the extreme of human suffering, magnifying them into heroes of epic proportions (before they donned their dingy garb of war they were "lice" that had to be "combed out"), endowing them with absurdly impossible virtues--when they were just ordinary human beings in misfortune with no ambition except to live in peace and comfort--and at the same time bestowing lofty patronage upon them and calling them "Tommies" and sending them cigarettes, chocolates and advice, as though they were children to be petted, with no will or intelligence of their own.

The Press, the cinema, the atrocity placards, and propagandist leaflets, they all practised the same deliberate and colossal deceit and kindled hatred against the enemy. And so successful was this diabolical conspiracy that hatred became second nature to vast masses of people. To think evil of the enemy was an article of national faith, and to question this faith, or still more to repudiate it, that was heresy of the most heinous kind. Religion died long ago, but the cult of nationalism that replaced it was infinitely more pernicious in its intolerance and cruelty than religion at its very worst.

Individually men are often good, but collectively men are always bad. The national mob had never been so powerful, nor had it ever been so servile, and that was why its passions were those of the coward and not of the brave man; that was why chivalry and generosity and fair-mindedness were execrated, and only hatred and boastfulness and vindictive malice were allowed to live.

The rapidity with which the time passed was terrifying. Although my leave had produced so much disillusionment, I yet dreaded its termination. Just as my life at the front had made me unfit for life at home, so my short spell of life at home had rendered me unfit for further life at the front. Moreover, I knew that my concrete experiences had done a little towards strengthening and confirming the attitude of my few friends, a consideration that gave me some satisfaction. I thought that in time I might get into touch with other people who shared our attitude and then take part in some anti-war movement and fight against the war instead of in it. That would have been the only activity to which I could have devoted myself with energy and enthusiasm. But I would soon have to go back and be muzzled once more by a ruthless discipline and an all-embracing censorship. Moreover, as my leave approached its end I began to regret that I had not striven harder to enjoy the comforts and freedom of civilian life. The dread of the coming return to slavery and dreary routine began to outweigh every other consideration. The prospect of living in a tent crowded with foul-mouthed, noisy soldiers filled me with dismay. I made a feeble attempt at securing an extension of my leave, but failed, and then I resigned myself to my fate.