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第4节

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the licence suddenly accorded to our vilest passions and most
abject terrors。 Ever since Thucydides wrote his history; it has
been on record that when the angel of death sounds his trumpet
the pretences of civilization are blown from men's heads into the
mud like hats in a gust of wind。 But when this scripture was
fulfilled among us; the shock was not the less appalling because
a few students of Greek history were not surprised by it。 Indeed
these students threw themselves into the orgy as shamelessly as
the illiterate。 The Christian priest; joining in the war dance
without even throwing off his cassock first; and the respectable
school governor expelling the German professor with insult and
bodily violence; and declaring that no English child should
ever again be taught the language of Luther and Goethe; were kept
in countenance by the most impudent repudiations of every decency
of civilization and every lesson of political experience on the
part of the very persons who; as university professors;
historians; philosophers; and men of science; were the accredited
custodians of culture。 It was crudely natural; and perhaps
necessary for recruiting purposes; that German militarism and
German dynastic ambition should be painted by journalists and
recruiters in black and red as European dangers (as in fact they
are); leaving it to be inferred that our own militarism and our
own political constitution are millennially democratic (which
they certainly are not); but when it came to frantic
denunciations of German chemistry; German biology; German poetry;
German music; German literature; German philosophy; and even
German engineering; as malignant abominations standing towards
British and French chemistry and so forth in the relation of
heaven to hell; it was clear that the utterers of such barbarous
ravings had never really understood or cared for the arts and
sciences they professed and were profaning; and were only the
appallingly degenerate descendants of the men of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries who; recognizing no national frontiers
in the great realm of the human mind; kept the European comity of
that realm loftily and even ostentatiously above the rancors of
the battle…field。 Tearing the Garter from the Kaiser's leg;
striking the German dukes from the roll of our peerage; changing
the King's illustrious and historically appropriate surname (for
the war was the old war of Guelph against Ghibelline; with the
Kaiser as Arch…Ghibelline) to that of a traditionless locality。
One felt that the figure of St。 George and the Dragon on our
coinage should be replaced by that of the soldier driving his
spear through Archimedes。 But by that time there was no coinage:
only paper money in which ten shillings called itself a pound as
confidently as the people who were disgracing their country
called themselves patriots。



The Sufferings of the Sane

The mental distress of living amid the obscene din of all these
carmagnoles and corobberies was not the only burden that lay on
sane people during the war。 There was also the emotional strain;
complicated by the offended economic sense; produced by the
casualty lists。 The stupid; the selfish; the narrow…minded; the
callous and unimaginative were spared a great deal。 〃Blood and
destruction shall be so in use that mothers shall but smile when
they behold their infantes quartered by the hands of war;〃 was a
Shakespearean prophecy that very nearly came true; for when
nearly every house had a slaughtered son to mourn; we should all
have gone quite out of our senses if we had taken our own and our
friend's bereavements at their peace value。 It became necessary
to give them a false value; to proclaim the young life worthily
and gloriously sacrificed to redeem the liberty of mankind;
instead of to expiate the heedlessness and folly of their
fathers; and expiate it in vain。 We had even to assume that the
parents and not the children had made the sacrifice; until at
last the comic papers were driven to satirize fat old men;
sitting comfortably in club chairs; and boasting of the sons they
had 〃given〃 to their country。

No one grudged these anodynes to acute personal grief; but they
only embittered those who knew that the young men were having
their teeth set on edge because their parents had eaten sour
political grapes。 Then think of the young men themselves! Many of
them had no illusions about the policy that led to the war: they
went clear…sighted to a horribly repugnant duty。 Men essentially
gentle and essentially wise; with really valuable work in hand;
laid it down voluntarily and spent months forming fours in the
barrack yard; and stabbing sacks of straw in the public eye; so
that they might go out to kill and maim men as gentle as
themselves。 These men; who were perhaps; as a class; our most
efficient soldiers (Frederick Keeling; for example); were not
duped for a moment by the hypocritical melodrama that consoled
and stimulated the others。 They left their creative work to
drudge at destruction; exactly as they would have left it to take
their turn at the pumps in a sinking ship。 They did not; like
some of the conscientious objectors; hold back because the ship
had been neglected by its officers and scuttled by its wreckers。
The ship had to be saved; even if Newton had to leave his
fluxions and Michael Angelo his marbles to save it; so they threw
away the tools of their beneficent and ennobling trades; and took
up the blood…stained bayonet and the murderous bomb; forcing
themselves to pervert their divine instinct for perfect artistic
execution to the effective handling of these diabolical things;
and their economic faculty for organization to the contriving of
ruin and slaughter。 For it gave an ironic edge to their tragedy
that the very talents they were forced to prostitute made the
prostitution not only effective; but even interesting; so that
some of them were rapidly promoted; and found themselves actually
becoming artists in wax; with a growing relish for it; like
Napoleon and all the other scourges of mankind; in spite of
themselves。 For many of them there was not even this consolation。
They 〃stuck it;〃 and hated it; to the end。



Evil in the Throne of Good

This distress of the gentle was so acute that those who shared it
in civil life; without having to shed blood with their own hands;
or witness destruction with their own eyes; hardly care to
obtrude their own woes。 Nevertheless; even when sitting at home
in safety; it was not easy for those who had to write and speak
about the war to throw away their highest conscience; and
deliberately work to a standard of inevitable evil instead of to
the ideal of life more abundant。 I can answer for at least one
person who found the change from the wisdom of Jesus and St。
Francis to the morals of Richard III and the madness of Don
Quixote extremely irksome。 But that change had to be made; and we
are all the worse for it; except those for whom it was not really
a change at all; but only a relief from hypocrisy。

Think; too; of those who; though they had neither to write nor to
fight; and had no children of their own to lose; yet knew the
inestimable loss to the world of four years of the life of a
generation wasted on destruction。 Hardly one of the epoch…making
works of the human mind might not have been aborted or destroyed
by taking their authors away from their natural work for four
critical years。 Not only were Shakespeares and Platos being
killed outright; but many of the best harvests of the survivors
had to be sown in the barren soil of the trenches。 And this was
no mere British consideration。 To the truly civilized man; to the
good European; the slaughter of the German youth was as
disastrous as the slaughter of the English。 Fools exulted in
〃German losses。〃 They were our losses as well。 Imagine exulting
in the death of Beethoven because Bill Sykes dealt him his death
blow!



Straining at the Gnat and swallowing the Camel

But most people could not comprehend these sorrows。 There was a
frivolous exultation in death for its own sake; which was at
bottom an inability to realize that the deaths were real deaths
and not stage ones。 Again and again; when an air raider dropped a
bomb which tore a child and its mother limb from limb; the people
who saw it; though they had been reading with great cheerfulness
of thousands of such happenings day after day in their
newspapers; suddenly burst into furious imprecations on 〃the
Huns〃 as murderers; and shrieked for savage and satisfying
vengeance。 At such moments it became clear that the deaths they
had not seen meant no more to them than the mimic death of the
cinema screen。 Sometimes it was not necessary that death should
be actually witnessed: it had only to take place under
circumstances of sufficient novelty and proximity to bring it
home almost as sensationally and effectively as if it had been
actually visible。

For example; in the spring of 1915 there was an appalling
slaughter of our young soldiers at Neuve Chapelle and at the
Gallipoli landing。 I will not go so far as to say that our
civilians were delighted to have such exciting news to re

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