Part 2

Mr. Bryce’s knowledge is the result not only of university training and experience in public life, but also of varied reading. He has read art, science, history, and has always been an interested student of poetry. In speaking once to Americans of Swinburne, he suddenly paused and asked, “Who are writing your songs and stirring your heart,--or isn’t your heart being stirred? Nothing is more important than that each generation and each land should have its poets. Each oncoming tide of life, each age, requires and needs men of lofty thought who shall dream and sing for it, who shall gather up its tendencies and formulate its ideals and voice its spirit, proclaiming its duties and awakening its enthusiasm, through the high authority of the poet and the art of his verse.” How extensively Mr. Bryce has read the poets, both ancient and modern, one perceives from the references and allusions in his Studies in Contemporary Biography.

The most important source of Mr. Bryce’s knowledge, the one which has furnished the material for nearly all his books, has been his first-hand observation and study of many countries. When still a young man he wandered alone over Mount Ararat, since the native guides refused to follow him to the unknown wilds of that lonely peak. He visited the Ottoman Empire in 1876, and, as a result of his investigations there, became an advocate of the Bulgarian cause; in fact it was his speeches on the Eastern Question which first made him prominent politically. Mr. Bryce has traveled also in Iceland; he was in Africa just previous to the Boer War; he has been all over South America; and he knows the United States as few Americans know it. He has studied these countries with great faithfulness, observing keenly every phase of the political and social life. An interesting sample of his method of gathering information is found in the chapter on “The Position of Women” in The American Commonwealth. When traveling in the West he noticed that all of the women seemed so very well dressed that apparently none could be the wife or daughter of a workingman; but close observation dispelled this illusion. Idling in a bookstore one day in Oregon, he noticed a woman who was asking for a certain magazine. After her departure he asked the salesman who she was, and found that she was the wife of a workman, and the magazine a Paris fashion journal. “This,” says Mr. Bryce, “set me to observing female dress more closely, and it turned out to be perfectly true that the women in these little towns were following the Parisian fashions very closely, and were, in fact, ahead of the majority of English ladies belonging to the professional and mercantile classes.” Thus no detail, however trivial, escapes him; the pleasant and unpleasant phases of our American life, our manners, clothes, scenery have all been noted and reckoned with in the statement of tendencies and conclusions.

As a parliamentarian Mr. Bryce is said to have been direct, honest, and always illuminating. His ability to command attention was due not to any great oratorical gift, but rather to his scholarly view of any matter under debate. Mr. Justin McCarthy reports that the members of the House who might be dining, smoking, or reading in the rooms assigned for these purposes, would, when the news was passed around that Mr. Bryce was speaking, leave these pleasant diversions, and betake themselves with great speed to the debating chamber. “I have many a time,” he says, “heard Conservative members murmur, in tones not altogether expressing absolute satisfaction at the disturbing information, ‘Bryce is up--I must go in and hear what he has to say.’ ... Everybody knows that when he speaks it is because he has something to say which ought to be spoken and therefore ought to be heard.” Mr. Bryce was able to command attention also because of his reputation as a courageous nonpartisan. He never advocated a measure or policy for mere party reasons or for personal aggrandizement. Not infrequently he has fought bravely with the minority of his own party, and has at times suffered bitter attacks, as when he remained resolutely pro-Boer during the rampant jingoism of the South African War. But however widely political enemies might differ from him, they respected his sincerity and his luminous view of governmental problems. It is further characteristic of Mr. Bryce’s public life that he never, in his desire for the welfare of his own country, lost sight of what is due other nations. In practice as well as in precept he upheld the doctrine that “patriotism consists not in waving a flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.”

Mr. Bryce’s books deal, for the most part, with historical subjects and present-day governments. The Holy Roman Empire, written when he was only twenty-four years old, is still regarded by able historians as an accurate and authoritative work; and, in the judgment of literary critics, it is written with so much charm of style that it is destined to become an English classic. All of the books which have to do with foreign nations are characterized by a tactful, faithful, and above all a truthful, handling. It was The American Commonwealth which made the citizens of the United States regard Mr. Bryce as a friend of the Republic; but he is not so regarded because he has always stroked the gleaming pinions of the American eagle. Although he does seem to share the hope universally cherished by Americans that we shall, in spite of grave national defects, “win out” in the end, he has nevertheless, in direct and unadorned statements, pointed out our faults. As an example of his characteristic straightforwardness of speech, take the following sentence: “America has little occasion to think of foreign affairs, but some of her domestic difficulties are such as to demand that careful observation and unbroken reflection which neither her executive magistrates, nor her legislatures, nor any leading class among her people now give.” Mr. Bryce has never ceased to insist that America suffers from lack of honest, courageous leadership in dealing with such problems as municipal evils and the insidious influence of “vested interests.” Our heedlessness and indifference to public matters is our national sin, but Mr. Bryce foresees a cure for our defects in the increasing zeal with which the younger generation is assuming the public burden; but how great must be its zeal and how steady its purpose if anything is to be accomplished, one is made poignantly aware by reading the account of the Tammany Ring in The American Commonwealth.

When a man of Mr. Bryce’s ability and experience points out definitely the chief obstacles to good citizenship and furthermore indicates the means by which these may be overcome, one may be as sure that he will say something which should be heeded as were the members of the House when he was a parliamentarian. In 1909, Mr. Bryce gave at Yale University a series of lectures which were later published by the Yale University Press under the title Hindrances to Good Citizenship. The main obstacles to good citizenship are defined as indolence, private self-interest, and party spirit.

The first lecture, “Indolence,” brings to mind the chapter in The American Commonwealth on “The War Against Bossdom,” with its vigorous concluding words, “In America, as everywhere else in the world, the commonwealth suffers more often from apathy or shortsightedness in the upper classes, who ought to lead, than from ignorance or recklessness in the humbler classes, who generally are ready to follow when wisely led.”

In the second lecture, “Private Self-Interest,” Mr. Bryce states the causes which produce a body of citizens who care more about their own advancement than about the welfare of the country. The most important of these causes are tariff issues, appropriations of public money for local interests, governmental contracts, public officeholding,--all representing “the insidious power of money which knows how to play upon the self-interest of voters and legislators, polluting at its source the spring of Civic Duty.”

The third lecture considers party spirit as a hindrance to citizenship. Mr. Bryce acknowledges the practical necessity for parties in the management of popular governments, and also the perplexing difficulties of a party leader who must decide between conscience and party. There is nevertheless but one course open to him: he must follow his conscience; only he must carefully distinguish between conscience and angular independence which is lacking in common sense and in willingness to defer to others in unimportant matters. For the average man the question is a simple one; relieved of the burdens of party leadership, he should follow his intelligence rather than his party. A large number of independent voters secures most effectively the right administration of public business.

The last lecture in the series, “How to Overcome the Obstacles to Good Citizenship,” suggests various means by which a more satisfactory body of citizens may be secured. In method and style this lecture is illustrative of the author’s peculiar strength in exposition.

Mr. Bryce’s writings are remarkable for the lucid organization of a wealth of detail into significant principles and sound conclusions; for vividness in the presentation of whatever pertains to humanity, and for gracious, winning English. One finds always in his work simplicity in the unfolding of material which has been carefully gathered and calmly judged. There is perfect clarity in the handling of a mass of detail, and such skillful subordination of it and masterly emphasis of important principles that the reader easily catches the bearing on the central thought of every illustration or description. There is also in the writing a solidity and firmness, a bracing stalwartness--qualities which are the result of the writer’s own sturdy nature. But this is not all. The author’s almost novelistic power of seeing persons and things makes his writing as vivid as a story; even his most abstract propositions are tangible and real. And the material is, moreover, so sympathetically and earnestly treated that it is at times lifted above mere pedestrian exposition and becomes warm with the feeling of the writer. The everyday words and unadorned sentences, infused with the spirit of the one who writes, become potent to stir slumbering ideals. Suddenly over the level way of mere intellectual matters falls a dreamy light, a Celtic graciousness of manner; and the reader no longer journeys along a mere brown path, but sees the familiar scenes of the way idealized by the touch of poetry. The value of skillful exposition as an asset for leadership, or for the accomplishment of any other purpose, Mr. Bryce fully appreciates. A command of language is a power possessed by nearly every one of the men, eminent in the nineteenth century, whom Mr. Bryce describes in his Studies in Contemporary Biography. By means of it Mr. John Richard Green wrote the most brilliant history of modern times; through the stirring editorials of the Nation, Mr. Godkin was able to arouse an indifferent American public to a more earnest consideration of the national welfare; and it was Mr. Gladstone’s gift of “noble utterance” which more than any other talent enabled him for many years to hold an authoritative political position. Mr. Bryce’s own rare power as a writer of vigorous, persuasive English is one of the qualities which has made him in a certain sense a citizen of the world with an almost world-wide influence.

However helpful Mr. Bryce’s method may be for the student who is attempting to understand and master the technique of successful English, it is the subject-matter which is primarily of importance. It is valuable for the student since it may serve to stimulate the investigation and expression of certain questions connected with the administration of public matters in his own town or city; and it may also suggest the explanation and judgment of measures proposed to secure better government, such as the Referendum. But the essential worth of the material lies in the fact that it is a tonic for relaxed vigilance in public affairs. It would be well to require every citizen of the United States to read in school days The American Commonwealth; one ventures to say that there would be, as a result, a steady advancement in the right understanding and fulfillment of civic duties; but even a limited acquaintance with Mr. Bryce should serve to define in clearer terms the elements of a sane and effective patriotism. And Mr. Bryce’s own life, unfalteringly and resolutely devoted to a just administration of governments, together with its unfailing graciousness in the most trying situations, furnishes an invigorating example of the truly successful statesman.

ADA L. F. SNELL.

Promoting Good Citizenship

INDOLENCE

Dr. Samuel Johnson, being once asked how he came to have made a blunder in his famous English Dictionary, is reported to have answered, “Ignorance, Sir, sheer ignorance.” Whoever has grown old enough to look back over the wasted opportunities of life--and we all of us waste more opportunities than we use--will be apt to ascribe most of his blunders to sheer indolence. Sometimes one has omitted to learn what it was needful to learn in order to proceed to action; sometimes one has shrunk from the painful effort required to reflect and decide on one’s course, leaving it to Fortune to settle what Will ought to have settled; sometimes one has, from mere self-indulgent sluggishness, let the happy moment slip.

The difference between men who succeed and men who fail is not so much as we commonly suppose due to differences in intellectual capacity. The difference which counts for most is that between activity and slackness; between the man who, observing alertly and reflecting incessantly, anticipates contingencies before they occur, and the lazy, easy-going, slowly-moving man who is roused with difficulty, will not trouble himself to look ahead, and so being taken unprepared loses or misuses the opportunities that lead to fortune. If it be true that everywhere, though perhaps less here than in European countries, energy is the exception rather than the rule, we need not wonder that men show in the discharge of civic duty the defects which they show in their own affairs. No doubt public affairs demand only a small part of their time. But the spring of self-interest is not strong where public affairs are concerned. The need for activity is not continuously present. A duty shared with many others seems less of a personal duty. If a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand other citizens are as much bound to speak, vote, or act as each one of us is, the sense of obligation becomes to each of us weak. Still weaker does it become when one perceives the neglect of others to do their duty. The need for the good citizen’s action, no doubt, becomes then all the greater. But it is only the best sort of citizen that feels it to be greater. The Average Man judges himself by the average standard and does not see why he should take more trouble than his neighbours. Thus we arrive at a result summed up in the terrible dictum, which reveals the basic fault of democracy, “What is Everybody’s business is Nobody’s business.”

Of indolence, indifference, apathy, in general, no more need be said. It is a sin that easily besets us all. We might suppose that where public affairs are concerned it would decrease under the influence of education and the press. But several general causes have tended to increase it in our own generation, despite the increasing strength of the appeal which civic duty makes to men who are, or if they cared might be, better informed about public affairs than were their fathers.

The first of these causes is that manners have grown gentler and passions less angry. A chief duty of the good citizen is to be angry when anger is called for, and to express his anger by deeds, to attack the bad citizen in office, or otherwise in power, to expose his dishonesty, to eject him from office, to brand him with an ignominy which will prevent his returning to any post of trust. In former days indignation flamed higher, and there was little tenderness for offenders. Jehu smote the prophets of Baal. Bad ministers--and no doubt sometimes good ministers also--were in England beheaded on Tower Hill. Everywhere punishment came quicker and was more severe, though to be sure it was often too harsh. Nowadays the arm of justice is often arrested by an indulgence which forgets that the true aim of punishment is the protection of the community. The very safeguards with which our slower and more careful procedure has surrounded trials and investigations, proper as such safeguards are for the security of the innocent, have often so delayed the march of justice that when a conviction has at last been obtained, the offence has begun to be forgotten and the offender escapes with a trifling penalty, or with none. This is an illustration of the principle that as righteous indignation is a valuable motive power in politics, the decline in it means a decline either in the standard of virtue or in the standard of zeal, possibly in both.

Another cause may be found in the fact that the enormous growth of modern states has made the share in government of the individual citizen seem infinitesimally small. In an average Greek republic, he was one of from two to ten thousand voters. In England or France to-day he is one of many millions. The chance that his vote will make any difference to the result is so slender that it appears to him negligible. We are proud, and justly proud, of having adapted free government to areas far vaster than were formerly thought capable of receiving free institutions. It was hoped that the patriotism of the citizen would expand with the magnitude of the State. But this did not happen in Rome, the greatest of ancient republics. Can we say that it has happened in the modern world? Few of us realize that though our own share may be smaller our responsibility increases with the power our State exerts. The late Professor Henry Sidgwick once travelled from Davos in the easternmost corner of Switzerland to the town of Cambridge in England and back again to deliver his vote against Home Rule at the general election of 1886, though he knew that his own side would have a majority in the constituency. Those who knew applauded, his opponents included, but I fear that few of us followed this shining example of civic virtue.

Thirdly, the highest, because the most difficult, duty of a citizen is to fight valiantly for his convictions when he is in a minority. The smaller the minority, and the more unpopular it is, and the more violent are the attacks upon it, so much the louder is the call of duty to defend one’s opinions. To withstand the “ardor civium prava iubentium”--to face “the multitude hasting to do evil”--this is the note and the test of genuine virtue and courage. Now this is, or seems to be, a more formidable task the vaster the community becomes. It is harder to make your voice heard against the roar of ocean than against the whistling squall that sweeps down over a mountain lake.

Lastly, there has been within the last century a great accession to our knowledge of nature, a more widely diffused and developed interest in literature and art as well as in science. This development, in itself fraught with laudable means of enjoyment, has had the unforeseen yet natural result of reducing the interest in public affairs among the educated classes, while the ardour with which competitions in physical strength and skill are followed has in like manner diverted the thoughts and attention of the less educated--and indeed, not of them alone but of many also in a class from whom better things might have been expected. Politics, in fact, have nowadays to strive against more rival subjects attracting men’s eyes and minds than they had before scientific discovery and art, and above all, athletic sports, came to fill newspapers and magazines.

But so far from being less important than they were, politics are growing in every country more important the wider the sphere of governmental action becomes. Nevertheless, even in England, which is perhaps slightly less addicted to this new passion for looking on at and reading about athletic competitions than are North America and Australia, a cricket or football match or a horse-race seems, if one may judge by the eager throngs that snatch the evening newspapers, to excite more interest in the middle as well as in the richer and in the upper section of the poorer classes than does any political event.

How to overcome these adverse tendencies is a question which I reserve till the last of these lectures. Meantime, let us look at some of the forms in which indifference to the obligations of citizenship reveals itself.

The first duty of the citizen used to be to fight, and to fight not merely against foes from another State, but against those also who, within his own State, were trying to overturn the Constitution or resist the laws. It is a duty still incumbent on us all, though the existence of soldiers and a police force calls us to it less frequently. The omission to take up arms in a civil strife was a grave offence in the republics of antiquity, where revolutions were frequent, as they are to-day in some of the states of Latin America. When respectable people stayed at home instead of taking sword and spear to drive out the adherents of an adventurer trying to make himself Tyrant, they gave the adventurer his chance: and in any case their abstention tended to prolong a civil war which would end sooner when it was seen which way the bulk of the people inclined. There was accordingly a law in some of the Greek republics that every citizen must take one side or the other in an insurrection. If he did not, he was liable to punishment. I have not heard of any one being indicted in England or the United States for failing to discharge his legal duty to join in the hue and cry after a thief, or to rally to the sheriff when he calls upon the posse comitatus to support him in maintaining law and order. But possibly an indictment would still lie; and in England we have within recent times enrolled bodies of special constables from the civil population to aid in maintaining public tranquillity.

More peaceful times have substituted for the duty of fighting the duty of voting. But even in small communities the latter duty has been often neglected. In Athens the magistrates used to send round the Scythian bowmen, who acted as their police, to scour the streets with a rope coloured with vermilion, and drag towards the Pnyx (the place of assembly), citizens who preferred to lounge or to mind what they called their own business, as if ruling the State was not their business. So in modern Switzerland some cantons have enacted laws fining those who, without reasonable excuse, neglect to vote. This is the more remarkable because the Swiss have a good record in the matter of voting, better, I think, than any other European people. Such a law witnesses not to exceptional negligence but to an exceptionally high standard of duty. In Britain we sometimes bring to the polls at a parliamentary election eighty, or even more than eighty, per cent of our registered electors, which is pretty good when it is remembered that the register may have been made up eleven months earlier, so that many electors are sure to have moved elsewhere. At elections for local authorities a much smaller proportion vote; and I fancy, though I have no figures at hand, that in France, Belgium, and still more in Italy the percentage voting at all sorts of elections is less than in Switzerland or in Britain. The number who vote does not perfectly measure the personal sense of duty among electors, because an efficient party organization may, like the Scythian bowmen, sweep voters who do not care but who can be either driven to the polls or paid to go. Unless it is money that takes the voters there, it is well that they should go; for it helps to form the habit.

This example has, I believe, been followed in Belgium.

Another form of civic apathy is the reluctance to undertake civic functions. In England this is not discoverable in any want of candidates for Parliament. They abound, though sometimes the fittest men prefer ease or business success to public life. But seats upon local authorities and especially upon municipal councils and district councils, seldom attract the best ability of the local community. In English and Scottish cities the leading commercial, financial, and professional men do not often appear as candidates, leaving the work to persons who are not indeed incompetent, being usually intelligent business men, but whose education and talents are sometimes below the level of the functions which these bodies discharge. No great harm has followed, because our city councillors are almost always honest. Local public opinion is vigilant and exacting, so a high standard of probity is maintained. But municipalities have latterly embarked on so many kinds of new work, and the revenues of the greater cities have so grown, that not merely business capacity and experience, but a large grasp of economic principles is required. This is no less true here in America, yet I gather that here it is found even more difficult than in Europe to secure the presence of able administrators in city councils.

A man engaged in a large business who takes up municipal work may doubtless find that he is making a pecuniary sacrifice. But if he has already an income sufficient for his comfort, may it not be his best way of serving his fellow-men?