Frivolity and Fair Play

New Zealand Tablet, 3 November 1921, Page 15

Frivolity and Fair Play

There is an atmosphere round the coming diplomatic conference which is at once hard to analyse and essential; to alter (says the New Witness for August 12). We do not refer to the elements which are palpably and positively one-sided, whether honest or dishonest. A man like Mond naturally hates Poland much more than he loves England. To do such men justice, they are merely indifferent to our English interests; while they would damage Polish interests with passion and delight. Nor do we refer to the strange but sincere fanaticism of papers like the Nation; and the people who merely pick out, in any foreign quarrel, the side against which they have some sectarian prejudice or other, and label its particular demands as “Imperialistic.” Thus they talk about Greek Imperialism; the Turks being notoriously superior to all imperialistic temptations. And so they- talk of the Imperialism of the Poles in Silesia; as if the presence of any Prussians at all in Silesia were not a monument of the success of the most insolent and infamous imperialism. Least of all do we include those who see in a certain division merely the literal and logical fulfilment of a treaty, who cannot see their way to accept the Polish argument for the counting of communes instead of individuals. We differ from the theory of these people for we think nothing more valuable than the principle of the equality of groups as distinct from that of individuals. It is, for instance, the very principle of . small natonalities that they should count like great ones; and we hope Mr. Harvey will remember that it is the principle not only of the separate nations of Europe but of the United' States of America. The other principle, always tends to the triumph of the abnormal fashion over the normal fact. But we can heartily respect those who really feel themselves bound to this form of the fulfilment of the treaty; and we agree that if that is really the contract, the contract should be fulfilled. But the thing of which we are now speaking is something much larger and looser and more prevalent that the views of these logical or fanatical minorities. It cannot be denied that a change of tone has taken place in considerable sections of public opinion in this country; and that many of the English, in a fashion incomprehensible to the French or to the Poles, are willing to be reconciled to the Germans.. To a Frenchman this attitude seems merely frivolous. And there is a real and sometimes even a respectful sense in which the English are frivolous. Only a people that was frivolous could have been so lightly and easily persuaded that it was sober and solid. The musclar Christianity of the upper and middle classes is a sort of schoolboy pose and among the poorer clases this levity is akin to laughter and kindness, and all that is best in the nation. But when it comes to judging for other nations, this geniality becomes the very narrowest sort of nationalism. It becomes the imposition of our own insular triviality as an imperial tyranny. It means a parade of forgiving other people’s injuries; and swaggering as good sportsmen because things are sport to us which are death to them. A good case of this international complication can be found in the use of the word “Hun.” Many in England to-day would take a half-humorous, • half-remorseful view of the use of it. They would/actually defend the use as an abuse; as people accused of slander do sometimes really defend it as vulgar abuse. Many would say that all is fair in love and war, or in hate and war, and that while the war lasted we might call the enemy a Hun as we might call him a Hobgoblin. And all the time the term “Hun” was not in the least vulgar abuse, or even vague abuse. It was a historical comparison that was accurate to the point of subtlety. It was a great deal too accurate to be understood in the least by the people who used it most. The Jingo journalist was a historian without knowing it, and probably without desiring it. As to the origin of the term, of course, nobody can deny that its use was just and logical-in an almost pedantic degree. It cannot be a slander to describe the German soldiers by a parallel which their own leader offered them as. a model. And when the Kaiser told his soldiers to destroy like Huns, he was only saying the sort of thing that all the Prussian leaders said systematically and steadily, up to the moment when the. Prussian. guard broke on the Marne. Prussia never pretended to be. just, or dreamed of pretending to be just,

until she began to be defeated. But the case for the epithet goes far beyond the coincidence of its coming from the German Emperor. The German Emperor, like the yellow journalists (whom he greatly resembled), was teaching better history than he knew. Attila did not lead a nation of Mongols or Tartars; what he led was a large loose alliance of Barbarians and especially of Teutons. That is, he provided an outlandish leadership for the Germans, just as the Prussian princes provided an outlandish leadership for the Germans. Neither the Huns nor the Hohenzollerns led a nation, but only a sort of federation for a foray. That sort of a league, having neither the honor nor the memory of a nation, is always irresponsible and inimitably destructive. The deeper we went into history, the truer we should find this comparison to be. But meanwhile the comparison was commonly used by people who had hardly ever heard of the Huns until they compared them to the Germans. • They said it much as, twenty years before, they used to call any longhaired violinist or other eccentric figure in the street by the allembracing name of “Krujer.” The English used the word Hun as they now use the word Bolshie; that is,. very much as two great English men of letters, used the words dumbly and Jabberwock; with a native and romantic relish for the remote' and the unknown. /For the English have a ’ vein of fantasy of which the weakness is frivolity, and the balance of merit a certain charity. Nobody who understands it will regret the humour of the English Tommy, who used to say to his prisoner “Come along, ’tin; don’t be down ’earted.” We feel' he had a right to drop Ills hatred with his q£her h’s. But when we have fully understood the best of the English spirit, there is something else that we must understand, or be dragged to destruction by the worst. Nations nearer the centre of the war for civilisation cannot have either our ignorance of history or our innocence of hatred. They cannot regard these things fantastically like a fairyland; they cannot regard, a Jew as a Jabberwock, or a Prussian as a Pobble, or a Bolshevist as a Boojum. To expect them to feel this humorous charity is to make the mistake of the child in Stevenson’s rhymes, who thought the little Japs and Eskimos must find it strange to live permanently abroad.,. . When a Frenchman talks of Huns he thinks of Huns; the real Huns of history who were defeated by his own fathers on Ids own plains. The huge camp of the fallen, tyrant of the Dark Ages still stands like a mountain looking towards Paris over, the ; fiats of Champagne. He does not amuse himself by suggesting that the old and new barbaric invasions are similar things; he knows they are the same .thing. He knows the barbariandanger is permanent; that it did not cease with the Huns, and- therefore will not cease with- the Hohenzollerns. In the same way the Pole does not regard the Prussians as we did at the worst time of the war; as a strange and sinster visitation from remote places; rather like the monsters from Mars who bestrode the Earth in the glorious nightmare of Mr,- Wells. The Pole regards Prussians as we regard wasps or vipers, or any sort of venomous vermin, whose habits are perfectly well known, and have to be dealt with accordingly. It is no use. offering * any views and aspects of Prussia to Poles ; it is as if a learned man came all the way from China to explain to us that fleas never bite. If we received him courteously, it would*, be the most that the Oriental could expect. If the Poles listen to us with patience, and even politeness, it will be as much as Ave can expect. Whatever else Ave do we must confront the Congiess with a comprehension of this other side of the moral balance. We must understand that there is truly a sobriety and dignity in their vindictiveness, which • there cannot he in our forgiveness. They may not pardon suddenly as> we do; but then they: did not hate suddenly as we .did. They did not begin abruptly, in 1914, to abuse Nietzsche Y and philosophers they had never heard of. . They had seen Nietzsche in action before he was ever in philosophy. Their case against Germany was war propaganda ; it Avas Avar. It was a war that never ended; and, in' the case of Poland, a revolution that never ended. ? It - was a war day and night; in the street and in the home. • We have no experience outside our nightmares from which Ave can form any notion of it. It may or may not be a part of our

national virtues that our views on foreign policy should change with %he stunts and stampedes of the Daily Mail It may be an element of freedom to have an element of 1 frivolity. We may be all the more genuine in our love of fair play, because the very term implies that life is play and not work. But if we have any instincts of sanity, we shall recognise this joke as a family joke; a local and ancestral levity. * - ■ ; We must expect something more serious than fair play when we enter the silent hall of justice. And Ave must force ourselves to face the fact, however incredible, that the North-Germans really are what, we ourselves called them incessantly at the top of our voices for five years.