Utopia of Usurers — Section 13

Then comes that other legend; the notion that men like the masters of the Newspaper Trusts “give the people what they want.

” Why, it is the whole aim and definition of a Trust that it gives the people what it chooses.

In the old days, when Parliaments were free in England, it was discovered that one courtier was allowed to sell all the silk, and another to sell all the sweet wine.

A member of the House of Commons humorously asked who was allowed to sell all the bread.

I really tremble to think what that sarcastic legislator would have said if he had been put off with the modern nonsense about “gauging the public taste.

” Suppose the first courtier had said that, by his shrewd, self-made sense, he had detected that people had a vague desire for silk; and even a deep, dim human desire to pay so much a yard for it!

Suppose the second courtier said that he had, by his own rugged intellect, discovered a general desire for wine: and that people bought his wine at his price--when they could buy no other!

Suppose a third courtier had jumped up and said that people always bought his bread when they could get none anywhere else.

Well, that is a perfect parallel.

“After bread, the need of the people is knowledge,” said Danton.

Knowledge is now a monopoly, and comes through to the citizens in thin and selected streams, exactly as bread might come through to a besieged city.

Men must wish to know what is happening, whoever has the privilege of telling them.

They must listen to the messenger, even if he is a liar.

They must listen to the liar, even if he is a bore.

The official journalist for some time past has been both a bore and a liar; but it was impossible until lately to neglect his sheets of news altogether.

Lately the capitalist Press really has begun to be neglected; because its bad journalism was overpowering and appalling.

Lately we have really begun to find out that capitalism cannot write, just as it cannot fight, or pray, or marry, or make a joke, or do any other stricken human thing.

But this discovery has been quite recent.

The capitalist newspaper was never actually unread until it was actually unreadable.

If you retain the servile superstition that the Press, as run by the capitalists, is popular (in any sense except that in which dirty water in a desert is popular), consider the case of the solemn articles in praise of the men who own newspapers--men of the type of Cadbury or Harmsworth, men of the type of the small club of millionaires.

Did you ever hear a plain man in a tramcar or train talking about Carnegie’s bright genial smile or Rothschild’s simple, easy hospitality?

Did you ever hear an ordinary citizen ask what was the opinion of Sir Joseph Lyons about the hopes and fears of this, our native land?

These few small-minded men publish, papers to praise themselves.

You could no more get an intelligent poor man to praise a millionaire’s soul, except for hire, than you could get him to sell a millionaire’s soap, except for hire.

And I repeat that, though there are other aspects of the matter of the new plutocratic raid, one of the most important is mere journalistic jealousy.

The Yellow Press is bad journalism: and wishes to stop the appearance of good journalism.

There is no average member of the public who would not prefer to have Lloyd George discussed as what he is, a Welshman of genius and ideals, strangely fascinated by bad fashion and bad finance, rather than discussed as what neither he nor anyone else ever was, a perfect democrat or an utterly detestable demagogue.

There is no reader of a daily paper who would not feel more concern--and more respect--for Sir Rufus Isaacs as a man who has been a stockbroker, than as a man who happens to be Attorney-General.

There is no man in the street who is not more interested in Lloyd George’s investments than in his Land Campaign.

There is no man in the street who could not understand (and like) Rufus Isaacs as a Jew better than he can possibly like him as a British statesman.

There is no sane journalist alive who would say that the official account of Marconis would be better “copy” than the true account that such papers as this have dragged out.

We have committed one crime against the newspaper proprietor which he will never forgive.

We point out that his papers are dull.

And we propose to print some papers that are interesting.

THE POETRY OF THE REVOLUTION

Everyone but a consistent and contented capitalist, who must be something pretty near to a Satanist, must rejoice at the spirit and success of the Battle of the Buses.

But one thing about it which happens to please me particularly was that it was fought, in one aspect at least, on a point such as the plutocratic fool calls unpractical.

It was fought about a symbol, a badge, a thing attended with no kind of practical results, like the flags for which men allow themselves to fall down dead, or the shrines for which men will walk some hundreds of miles from their homes.

When a man has an eye for business, all that goes on on this earth in that style is simply invisible to him.

But let us be charitable to the eye for business; the eye has been pretty well blacked this time.

But I wish to insist here that it is exactly what is called the unpractical part of the thing that is really the practical.

The chief difference between men and the animals is that all men are artists;

though the overwhelming majority of us are bad artists.

As the old fable truly says, lions do not make statues; even the cunning of the fox can go no further than the accomplishment of leaving an exact model of the vulpine paw: and even that is an accomplishment which he wishes he hadn’t got.

There are Chryselephantine statues, but no purely elephantine ones.

And, though we speak in a general way of an elephant trumpeting, it is only by human blandishments that he can be induced to play the drum.

But man, savage or civilised, simple or complex always desires to see his own soul outside himself; in some material embodiment.

He always wishes to point to a table in a temple, or a cloth on a stick, or a word on a scroll, or a badge on a coat, and say: “This is the best part of me.

If need be, it shall be the rest of me that shall perish.

” This is the method which seems so unbusinesslike to the men with an eye to business.

This is also the method by which battles are won.

The Symbolism of the Badge The badge on a Trade Unionist’s coat is a piece of poetry in the genuine, lucid, and logical sense in which Milton defined poetry (and he ought to know) when he said that it was simple, sensuous, and passionate.

It is simple, because many understand the word “badge,” who might not even understand the word “recognition.

” It is sensuous, because it is visible and tangible; it is incarnate, as all the good Gods have been; and it is passionate in this perfectly practical sense, which the man with an eye to business may some day learn more thoroughly than he likes, that there are men who will allow you to cross a word out in a theoretical document, but who will not allow you to pull a big button off their bodily clothing, merely because you have more money than they have.

Now I think it is this sensuousness, this passion, and, above all, this simplicity that are most wanted in this promising revolt of our time.

For this simplicity is perhaps the only thing in which the best type of recent revolutionists have failed.

It has been our sorrow lately to salute the sunset of one of the very few clean and incorruptible careers in the most corruptible phase of Christendom.

The death of Quelch naturally turns one’s thoughts to those extreme Marxian theorists, who, whatever we may hold about their philosophy, have certainly held their honour like iron.

And yet, even in this instant of instinctive reverence, I cannot feel that they were poetical enough, that is childish enough, to make a revolution.

They had all the audacity needed for speaking to the despot; but not the simplicity needed for speaking to the democracy.

They were always accused of being too bitter against the capitalist.

But it always seemed to me that they were (quite unconsciously, of course) much too kind to him.

They had a fatal habit of using long words, even on occasions when he might with propriety have been described in very short words.

They called him a Capitalist when almost anybody in Christendom would have called him a cad.

And “cad” is a word from the poetic vocabulary indicating rather a general and powerful reaction of the emotions than a status that could be defined in a work of economics.

The capitalist, asleep in the sun, let such long words crawl all over him, like so many long, soft, furry caterpillars.

Caterpillars cannot sting like wasps.

And, in repeating that the old Marxians have been, perhaps, the best and bravest men of our time, I say also that they would have been better and braver still if they had never used a scientific word, and never read anything but fairy tales.

The Beastly Individualist Suppose I go on to a ship, and the ship sinks almost immediately; but I (like the people in the Bab Ballads), by reason of my clinging to a mast, upon a desert island am eventually cast.

Or rather, suppose I am not cast on it, but am kept bobbing about in the water, because the only man on the island is what some call an Individualist, and will not throw me a rope; though coils of rope of the most annoying elaboration and neatness are conspicuous beside him as he stands upon the shore.

Now, it seems to me, that if, in my efforts to shout at this fellow-creature across the crashing breakers, I call his position the “insularistic position,” and my position “the semi-amphibian position,” much valuable time may be lost.

I am not an amphibian.

I am a drowning man.

He is not an insularist, or an individualist.

He is a beast.

Or rather, he is worse than any beast can be.

And if, instead of letting me drown, he makes me promise, while I am drowning, that if I come on shore it shall be as his bodily slave, having no human claims henceforward forever, then, by the whole theory and practice of capitalism, he becomes a capitalist, he also becomes a cad.

Now, the language of poetry is simpler than that of prose; as anyone can see who has read what the old-fashioned protestant used to call confidently “his” Bible.

And, being simpler, it is also truer; and, being truer, it is also fiercer.

And, for most of the infamies of our time, there is really nothing plain enough, except the plain language of poetry.

Take, let us say, the ease of the recent railway disaster, and the acquittal of the capitalists’ interest.

It is not a scientific problem for us to investigate.

It is a crime committed before our eyes;

committed, perhaps, by blind men or maniacs, or men hypnotised, or men in some other ways unconscious; but committed in broad daylight, so that the corpse is bleeding on our door-step.

Good lives were lost, because good lives do not pay; and bad coals do pay.

It seems simply impossible to get any other meaning out of the matter except that.

And, if in human history there be anything simple and anything horrible, it seems to have been present in this matter.

If, even after some study and understanding of the old religious passions which were the resurrection of Europe, we cannot endure the extreme infamy of witches and heretics literally burned alive--well, the people in this affair were quite as literally burned alive.

If, when we have really tried to extend our charity beyond the borders of personal sympathy, to all the complexities of class and creed, we still feel something insolent about the triumphant and acquitted man who is in the wrong, here the men who are in the wrong are triumphant and acquitted.

It is no subject for science.

It is a subject for poetry.

But for poetry of a terrible sort.

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