  The Eye Witness THE PUBLICATION OF What's Wrong With the World brings us to 1910. Gilbert had, as we have seen, originally intended to call the book What's Wrong? laying some emphasis on the note of interrogation. It amused him to perplex the casual visitor by going off to his study with the muttered remark: "I must get on with What's Wrong." The change of name and the omission of the note of interrogation (both changes the act of his publishers) represented a certain loss, for indeed Gilbert was still asking himself what was wrong when he was writing this book, although he was very certain what was right—his ideals were really a clear picture of health. His doubts about the achievement of those ideals in the present world and with his present political allegiance were, as he suggests in the Autobiography, vague but becoming more definite. Did this mean that he ever looked hopefully towards the other big division of the English political scene—the Tory or Conservative party to which his brother had once declared he belonged without knowing it? That would be a simpler story than what really happened in his mind—and I confess that I am myself sufficiently vague and doubtful about part of what the Chesterbelloc believed they were discovering, to find it a little difficult to describe it clearly. Cecil Chesterton and Belloc set down their views in a book called The Party System. Gilbert made his clear in letters to the Liberal Press. The English party system had often enough been attacked for its obvious defects and indeed the New Witness's even livelier contemporary John Bull was shouting for its abolition. But Belloc and Cecil Chesterton had their own line. Their general thesis was that not only did the people of England not govern, Parliament did not govern either. The Cabinet governed and it was chosen by the real rulers of the party. For each party was run by an oligarchy, and run roughly on the same lines. Lists were given of families whose brothers-in-law and cousins (though not yet their sisters and their aunts) found place in the Ministry of one or other political party. Moreover, the governing families on both sides were in many cases connected by birth or marriage and all belonged to the same social set. But money too was useful: men could buy their way in. Each party had a fund, and those who could contribute largely had of necessity an influence on party policy. The existent Liberal Government had brought to a totally new peak the art of swelling its fund by the sale of titles: which in many instances meant the sale of hereditary governing powers, since those higher titles which carry with them a seat in the House of Lords were sold like the others, at a higher rate naturally. For the rank and file member, a political career no longer meant the chance for talents and courage to win recognition in an open field. A man who believed that his first duty was to represent his constituents stood no chance of advancement. Certainly a private member could not introduce a bill as his own and get it debated on its merits. None of this was new, though the book did it rather exceptionally well. What was new was the theory that the two party oligarchies were secretly one, that the fights between the parties were little more than sham fights. The ordinary party member was unaware of this secret conspiracy between the leaders and would obey the call of the party Whip and accept a sort of military discipline with the genuine belief that the defeat of his party would mean disaster to his country. Belloc had discovered for himself the impotence of the private member. He had, as we have seen, been elected to Parliament by South Salford in 1906 as a Liberal. In Parliament he proposed a measure for the publication of the names of subscribers to the Party Funds. Naturally enough the proposal got nowhere. Also naturally enough the Party Funds were not forthcoming to support him at the next election. He fought and won the seat as an Independent. At the second election of 1910 he declined to stand, having lucidly explained to the House of Commons in a final speech that a seat there was of no value under the existing system. Thus Belloc's own experience, and a thousand other things, went to prove the stranglehold the rulers of the party had on the party. But did it prove, or did the book establish, the theory of a behind-scenes conspiracy between the small groups who controlled each of the great historical parties, which was the theme not only of The Party System but also of Belloc's brilliant political novels— notably Mr. Clutterbuck's Election and Pongo and the Bull? Of the stranglehold there was no doubt and Gilbert soon found it too much for his own allegiance to the Liberal Party or any other. At the election of 1910, he addressed a Liberal meeting at Beaconsfield and dealt vigorously with constant Tory questions and interjections from the back of the hall. He obviously enjoyed the fight and a little later he spoke for the "League of Young Liberals" and was photographed standing at the back of their van. But although he went to London to vote for John Burns in Battersea and would probably have continued to vote Liberal or Labour, he showed at a Women's Suffrage meeting in 1911 a growing scepticism about the value of the vote. He was reported as saying, "If I voted for John Burns now, I should not be voting for anything at all (laughter)." It must have been irritating that this interpolation "laughter" was liable to occur when Chesterton was most serious; he did not change quickly but in the alteration of his outlook towards his party, his growing doubt whether it stood for any real values, he was very serious. In the years that followed the coming into power of Liberalism there were a multitude of Acts described as of little importance and passed into law after little or no discussion. At the same time, private members complained that they could get no attention for really urgent matters of social reform. The Nation, as a party paper, defended the state of things and talked of official business and of want of time. Their attitude was vigorously attacked by Gilbert, whose first letter (Jan. 17, 1911) ended with this paragraph: Who ever dreamed of getting "perfect freedom and fulness of discussion" except in heaven? The case urged against Cabinets is that we have no freedom and no discussion, except that laid down despotically by a few men on front benches. Your assurance that Parliament is very busy is utterly vain. It is busy on things the dictators direct. That small men and small questions get squeezed out among big ones, that is a normal disaster. With us, on the contrary, it is the big questions that get squeezed out. The Party was not allowed really to attack the South African War, for fear it should alienate Mr. Asquith. It was not allowed to object to Mr. Herbert Gladstone (or is it Lord Gladstone? This blaze of democracy blinds one) when he sought to abolish the Habeas Corpus Act, and leave the poorer sort of pickpockets permanently at the caprice of their jailers. Parliament is busy on the aristocratic fads; and mankind must mark time with a million stamping feet, while Mr. Herbert Samuel searches a gutter-boy for cigarettes. That is what you call the congestion of Parliament. The Editor of the Nation was so rash as to append to this letter the words, "We must be stupid for we have no idea what Mr. Chesterton means." This was too good an opening to be lost. G.K. returned to the charge and I feel that this correspondence is so important in various ways that the next two letters should be given in full. Sir, In a note to my last week's letter you remark, "We must be stupid; but we have no idea what Mr. Chesterton means." As an old friend I can assure you that you are by no means stupid; some other explanation of this unnatural darkness must be found; and I find it in the effect of that official party phraseology which I attack, and which I am by no means alone in attacking. If I had talked about "true Imperialism," or "our loyalty to our gallant leader," you might have thought you knew what I meant; because I meant nothing. But I do mean something; and I do want you to understand what I mean. I will, therefore, state it with total dullness, in separate paragraphs; and I will number them. (1) I say a democracy means a State where the citizens first desire something and then get it. That is surely simple. (2) I say that where this is deflected by the disadvantage of representation, it means that the citizens desire a thing and tell the representatives to get it. I trust I make myself clear. (3) The representatives, in order to get it at all, must have some (4) You, I understand, hold that English M. P.s today do thus obey (5) I say they don't. Tell me if I am getting too abstruse. (6) I say our representatives accept designs and desires almost entirely from the Cabinet class above them; and practically not at all from the constituents below them. I say the people does not wield a Parliament which wields a Cabinet. I say the Cabinet bullies a timid Parliament which bullies a bewildered people. Is that plain? (7) If you ask why the people endure and play this game, I say they play it as they would play the official games of any despotism or aristocracy. The average Englishman puts his cross on a ballot-paper as he takes off his hat to the King—and would take it off if there were no ballot-papers. There is no democracy in the business. Is that definite? (8) If you ask why we have thus lost democracy, I say from two causes; (a) The omnipotence of an unelected body, the Cabinet; (b) the party system, which turns all politics into a game like the Boat Race. Is that all right? (9) If you want examples I could give you scores. I say the people did not cry out that all children whose parents lunch on cheese and beer in an inn should be left out in the rain. I say the people did not demand that a man's sentence should be settled by his jailers instead of by his judges. I say these things came from a rich group, not only without any evidence, but really without any pretence, that they were popular. I say the people hardly heard of them at the polls. But here I do not need to give examples, but merely to say what I mean. Surely I have said it now. Yours, G. K. CHESTERTON.January 26th, 1911. Editor's Note. Mr. Chesterton is precise enough now, but he is precisely wrong. There are grains of truth in his premises, a bushel of exaggeration in his conclusions. We have not "lost democracy"; the two instances which he alleges, both of which we dislike, are too small to prove so large a case. To this G. K. replied: Sir, I want to thank you for printing my letters, and especially for your last important comment, in which you say that the Crimes and Children's Acts were bad, but are "too small" to support a charge of undemocracy. And I want to ask you one last question, which is the question. Why do you think of these things as small? They are really enormous. One alters the daily habits of millions of people; the other destroys the public law of thousands of years. What can be more fundamental than food, drink, and children? What can be more catastrophic than putting us back in the primal anarchy, in which a man was flung into a dungeon and left there "till he listened to reason?" There has been no such overturn in European ethics since Constantine proclaimed the cross. Why do you think of these things as small? I will tell you. Unconsciously, no doubt, but simply and solely because the Front Benches did not announce them as big. They were not "first-class measures"; they were not "full-dress debates." The governing class got them through in the quick, quiet, secondary way in which they pass things that the people positively detests; not in the pompous, lengthy, oratorical way in which they present measures that the people merely bets on, as it might on a new horse. A "first-class measure" means, for instance, tinkering for months at some tottery compromise about a Religious Education that doesn't exist. The reason is simple. "Sound Church Teaching" and "Dogmatic Christianity" both happen to be hobbies in the class from which Cabinets come. But going to public-houses and going to prison are both habits with which that class is, unfortunately, quite unfamiliar. It is ready, therefore, at a stroke of the pen, to bring all folly into the taverns and all injustice into the jails. Yours, G. K. CHESTERTON.February 2nd, 1911. It was not only in the Nation that such letters as these appeared. First, in whose eyes but ours has the Party System lost credit? I say in nearly everybody's. If this were a free country, I could mention offhand a score of men within a stone's throw; an innkeeper, a doctor, a shopkeeper, a lawyer, a civil servant. As it is, I may put it this way. In a large debating society I proposed to attack the Party System, and for a long time I could not get an opposer. At last, I got one. He defended the Party System on the ground that people must be bamboozled more or less. Second, he asks if the Party System does not govern the country to the content of most citizens. I answer that Englishmen are happy under the Party System solely and exactly as Romans were happy under Nero. That is, not because government was good, but because Life is good, even without good government. Nero's slaves enjoyed Italy, not Nero. Modern Englishmen enjoy England but certainly not the British Constitution. The legislation is detested, wherever it is even felt. The other day a Cambridge don complained that, when out bicycling with his boys, he had to leave them in the rain while he drank a glass of cider. Count the whole series of human souls between a costermonger and a Cambridge don, and you will see a nation in mutiny. Third, "What substitute, etc., etc." Here again, the answer is simple and indeed traditional. I suggest we should do what was always suggested in the riddles and revolutions of the recent centuries. In the seventeenth century phrase, I suggest that we should "call a free Parliament!" Fourth, "Is Democracy compatible with Parliamentary Government?" God forbid. Is God compatible with Church Government? Why should He be? It is the other things that have to be compatible with God. A church can only be a humble effort to utter God. A Parliament can only be a humble effort to express Man. But for all that, there is a deal of commonsense left in the world, and people do know when priests or politicians are honestly trying to express a mystery—and when they are only taking advantage of an ambiguity. G. K. CHESTERTON.Encouraged by the excitement that had attended the publication of The Party System its authors decided to attempt a newspaper of their own. This paper is still in existence but it has in the course of its history appeared under four different titles. To avoid later confusion I had better set these down at the outset. The Eye Witness, June 1911-October 1912 During the first year of its existence the Eye Witness was edited by Belloc. Cecil Chesterton took over the editorship after a short interregnum during which he was assistant editor. Charles Granville had financed it. When he went bankrupt the title was altered to The New Witness. When Cecil joined the Army in 1916, G.K. became Editor. In 1923 the paper died, but two years later rose again under the title, G.K.'s Weekly. After Gilbert's own death Belloc took it back. Today, as The Weekly Review, it is edited by Reginald Jebb, Belloc's son-in-law. With all these changes of name, the continuity of the paper is unmistakable. Its main aim may be roughly defined under two headings. 1. To fight for the liberty of Englishmen against increasing enslavement to a Plutocracy. 2. To expose and combat corruption in public life. The fight for Liberty appears in the letters quoted above in the form of an attack on certain bills: Belloc unified and defined it with real genius in the articles which became two of his most important books: The Servile State and The Restoration of Property. If these two books be set beside Chesterton's What's Wrong With the World and The Outline of Sanity the Chesterbelloc sociology stands complete. In his Cobbett, G.K. was later to emphasise the genius with which Cobbett saw the England of today a hundred years before it was there to be seen. Belloc in the same way saw both what was coming and the way in which it was coming. Especially far-sighted was his attitude to Lloyd George's Compulsory Health Insurance Act. It was the first act of the kind in England and the scheme in outline was: every week every employed person must have a stamp stuck on a card by his employer, of which he paid slightly less and the employer slightly more than half the cost. The money thus saved gave the insured person free medical treatment and a certain weekly sum during the period of illness. Agricultural labourers were omitted from the act and a ferment raged on the question of domestic servants, who were eventually included in its operation. It was practically acknowledged that this was done to make the Act more workable financially. For domestic servants were an especially healthy class and, moreover, in most upper and middle-class households they were already attended by the family doctor without cost to themselves. The company in which the Eye Witness found itself in opposing this Act was indeed a case of "strange bedfellows." For the opposition was led by the Conservatives (on the ground that the Act was Socialism). Many a mistress and many a maid did I hear in those days in good Conservative homes declaring they would rather go to prison than "lick Lloyd George's stamps." Most Liberals, on the other hand, regarded the Act as an example of enlightened legislation for the benefit of the poor. The Eye Witness saw in it the arrival of the Servile State. Their main objections cut deep. As with compulsory education, but in much more far-reaching fashion, this Act took away the liberty and the personal responsibilities of the poor—and in doing so put them into a category—forever ticketed and labelled, separated from the other part of the nation. As people for whom everything had to be done, they were increasingly at the mercy of their employers, of Government Inspectors, of philanthropic societies, increasingly slaves. What was meant by the Servile State? It was, said Belloc, an "arrangement of society in which so considerable a number of the families and individuals are constrained by positive law to labour for the advantage of other families and individuals as to stamp the whole community with the mark of such labour." It was, quite simply, the return of slavery as the condition of the poor: and the Chesterbelloc did not think, then or ever, that any increase of comfort or security was a sufficient good to be bought at the price of liberty. In a section of the paper called "Lex versus the Poor" the editor made a point of collecting instances of oppression. A series of articles attacked the Mentally Deficient Bill whereby poor parents could have their children taken from them—those children who most needed them and whom they often loved and clung to above the others, and a Jewish contributor to the paper, Dr. Eder, pointed out in admirable letters how divided was the medical profession itself on what constituted mental deficiency and whether family life was not far more likely to develop the mind than segregation with other deficients in an Institution. To the official harriers of the poor were added further inspectors sent by such societies as the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Cruelty to children, as Gilbert often pointed out, is a horrible thing, but very seldom proved of parents against their own children. The word was stretched to cover anything that these inspectors called neglect. Lately we have read of a case, and many like it were reported in the New Witness, where failure to wash children adequately was called cruelty. And what was the remedy? To take away the father, the breadwinner, to prison. For insufficient food and clothes to substitute destitution, for insufficient care to remove the only one the children had to care for them at all: always to break up the family. Worst of all was the question of school attendance: While a child of three was dying of starvation, the mother was at the Police Court where she was fined for not sending an older child to school. As she could not pay the fine her husband was sent to prison for a week. A child died of consumption. The parents said at the inquest they had not dared to keep her at home when she got sick, for fear of the school inspector. As he had in What's Wrong With the World been fired by the thought of the landless poor of England, so now these stories stirred Gilbert deeply. He saw the philanthropists like the Pharisees, unheeding the wisdom learned by the Wise Men at Bethlehem: saw them with their busy pencils peering at the Mother's omissions while the vast crimes of the State went unchallenged. He wrote a poem called "The Neglected Child" and "dedicated in a glow of Christian Charity to a philanthropic Society." The Teachers in the temple They heeded jot and tittle, Or how the panic of the poor They made their notes; while naked But they did chide Our Lady To most of the Eye Witness group the fight for freedom was so bound up with the fight against corruption that all was but one fight. I think that when they looked back they were too much inclined to see the shadow of Lloyd George behind them as well as around them: that in fact the Liberal Party of those years had brought with it a new descent in political decency—a descent which would have startled both Gladstone and the more cynical Disraeli. Of this more when we come to Marconi. Meanwhile there was certainly a whole lot to fight about and the group responsible for the Witness, not content with the pen, formed a Society entitled "The League for Clean Government," with Mr. John Scurr as Secretary. This League specialised in promoting the candidature of independent Members of Parliament for such vacancies as occurred between general elections, and in attacking Party "place men." Doubtless other elements were present at some of these by-elections but the League boasted its success on several occasions, notably in the three defeats sustained by C. F. G. Masterman. Charles Masterman had been with Gilbert and Cecil Chesterton a member of the group of young Christian Socialists that drew its inspiration in great part from Canon Scott Holland. He had gone further than most of them in his practical sympathy and understanding for the destitute. With a friend he had taken a workman's flat in the slums and he had written a somewhat florid but very moving book recording conditions experienced as well as observed. He was one of the Young Liberals who entered Parliament full of ardour to fight the battles of the poor. The sequel as they saw it may best be told by Belloc and Cecil Chesterton themselves. In The Party System they wrote: . . . Mr. Masterman entered Parliament as a Liberal of independent views. During his first two years in the House he distinguished himself as a critic of the Liberal Ministry. He criticised their Education Bill. He criticised with especial force the policy of Mr. John Burns at the Local Government Board. His conduct attracted the notice of the leaders of the party. He was offered office, accepted it, and since then has been silent, except for an occasional rhetorical exercise in defence of the Government. One fact will be sufficient to emphasise the change. On March 13th, 1908, Mr. Masterman voted for the Right to Work Bill of the Labour Party. In May of the same year he accepted a place with a salary of £1200 a year—it has since risen to £1500. On April 20th, 1909, he voted, at the bidding of the Party Whips, against the same Bill which he had voted for in the previous year. Yet this remarkable example of the "peril of change"* does not apparently create any indignation or even astonishment in the political world which Mr. Masterman adorns. On the contrary, he seems to be generally regarded as a politician of exceptionally high ideals. No better instance need be recorded of the peculiar atmosphere it is the business of these pages to describe. [* The title of one of Masterman's books was In Peril of Change.] At the succeeding General Election, Masterman was not re-elected. And he failed again in a couple of by-elections. In all these elections, the League for Clean Government campaigned fiercely against him. There was certainly in the feeling of Belloc and Cecil Chesterton towards Masterman a great deal of the bitterness that moved Browning to write, "Just for a handful of silver he left us," and I do not think there is anything in the history of the paper that created so strong a feeling against it in certain minds. There seemed something peculiarly ungenerous in the continued attacks after a series of defeats, in the insistence with which Masterman's name was dragged in, always accompanied by sneers. Replying to a remonstrance to this effect, Cecil Chesterton, then Editor of the New Witness, stated that in his considered opinion it was a duty to make a successful career impossible to any man convicted of selling his principles for success. I dwell on this matter of Masterman for two reasons. The first is that it was one of the rare occasions on which Gilbert Chesterton disagreed with his brother and Belloc. Gilbert was a very faithful friend: it would be hard to find a broken friendship in his life. He had moreover much of the power that aroused his enthusiasm in Browning of going into the depths of a character and discovering the virtue concealed there. And as with Browning his explanation took account of elements that really existed but could find no place in a more narrowly adverse view. "Many of my own best friends," he wrote of Masterman, "entirely misunderstood and underrated him. It is true that as he rose higher in politics, the veil of the politician began to descend a little on him also; but he became a politician from the noblest bitterness on behalf of the poor; and what was blamed in him was the fault of much more ignoble men. . . . But he was also an organiser and liked governing; only his pessimism made him think that government had always been bad, and was now no worse than usual. Therefore, to men on fire for reform, he came to seem an obstacle and an official apologist." After G.K. became Editor of the New Witness the attacks on Masterman ceased, but he did not differ from the two earlier Editors in his views on the ethics of political action or the principles of social reform. The second reason for which the Masterman matter must be dwelt on is because it affords the best illustration of one curious fact in connection with the Eye and New Witness campaign. When the Life of Masterman recently appeared I seized it eagerly that I might read an authoritative defence of his position. I searched the Index under Eye Witness, New Witness, Cecil Chesterton and League for Clean Government. No one of them was mentioned. At last I discovered under Belloc and Scurr a faint allusion to their activities at a by-election in which Belloc was coupled with the Protestant Alliance leader Kensit as part of a contemptible opposition, and the unnamed League for Clean Government described as "those working with Mr. Scurr"! Clearly where it is possible to use against something powerful the weapon of ignoring it as though it were something obscure, that weapon is itself a powerful one. Against the New Witness it was used perpetually. A paper which included among its contributors Hilaire Belloc, G. K. Chesterton, J. S. Phillimore, E. C. Bentley, Wells, Shaw, Katharine Tynan, Desmond McCarthy, F. Y. Eccles, G. S. Street—to name only those who come first to mind—obviously stood high. Cecil Chesterton's own editorials, Hugh O'Donnell's picturesque series Twenty Years After, the high level of the reviewing and (oddly enough, considering the paper's outlook) the financial articles of Raymond Radclyffe, were all outstanding. The sales (at sixpence) were never enormous but the readers were on a high cultural level. The correspondence pages are always interesting. The Eye Witness group, besides courage, had high spirits and they had wit. "Capulet's" rhymes; the series of ballades written by Baring, Bentley, Phillimore, Belloc and G.K.C.; "Mrs. Markham's History" written by Belloc; there was little of this quality in the other weeklies. Side by side with the serious attacks was a line of satire and of sheer fooling. The silver deal in India was being attacked in the editorials, while Mrs. Markham explained to Tommy how good, kind Lord Swaythling, really a Samuel, had lent money to his brother Mr. Montague (another Samuel) for the benefit of the poor people of India. The next week Tommy and Rachel grew enthusiastic about the kindness of Lord Swaythling in borrowing money that the Indian Government could not use. Mrs. Markham too made Rachel take a pencil and write out a list of Samuels including the Postmaster-General, now so busy over the Marconi Case. The next lesson was about titles. Then came one about policemen, and finally about company promoters and investments. How a promoter guesses there is oil somewhere, how money is lent to dig for it ("But, Mamma! How can money dig?"), how the Company promoter may find no oil, how if they think he has cheated them the rich men who lent their money can have him tried by twelve good men and true—(Tommy: "How do they know the men are good and true, Mamma?" Mrs. M.: "They do this by taking them in alphabetical order out of a list."). Perhaps the combination of irony thinly veiling intensity of purpose, with humour sometimes degenerating into wild fooling, damned them in the eyes of many. But there was a more serious obstacle to the real effectiveness they might otherwise have had. When it was unavoidable to name the New Witness its opponents referred to it as though to a "rag." Why was this possible? Principally I think because of the violence of its language. Most Parliamentary matters to which it made reference were spoken of as instances of "foul" corruption or "dirty" business. Transactions by Ministers were said to "stink," while the Ministers themselves were described as carrying off or distributing "swag" and "boodle." In Vol. II of the Eye Witness, for instance, we find the "game of boodle," "dirty trick," "Keep your eye on the Railway Bill: you are going to be fleeced," and "stunt" and "ramp" passim. Mr. Lloyd George and Sir Rufus Isaacs are always called "George" and "Isaacs." The General of the Salvation Army is invariably "Old Booth," while in the headlines the word "Scandal" constantly recurs. Even admirers were at times like Fox's followers who Groaned "What a passion he was in tonight! |
|
