The New Age
Vol. 16 No 9
31st December 1914
I HAD not seen Rathbone for some months, in fact, not since the war began, and with many apologies on my lips I called on him last week. I found him reading, in Latin, Erasmus on the Praise of Folly. He had some rather curious books on his table and on the shelves beside him. I noticed Grotius on Literary Studies, Vitruvius on Architecture, St. Jerome, St. Thomas Aquinas, Boethius, the Hours of the Virgin, some medieval histories and some medieval treatises on the nature of God-all in Latin. Simpson was in the basket-chair, languidly glancing at Ortelius on geographical names.
Rathbone waved aside my apologies. “Tell me,” he said, “do you talk Latin?” “I don’t even read it,” I answered, “it is years since I took my fourth in Greats. But why are you thus buried in a dead language? Are you thinking of becoming a monk?” “I did think of it,” said Rathbone, “but I decided that it isn’t absolutely necessary. It is enough to think in Latin. Do you remember Wilde’s remark on Meredith’s style – ‘that hedge set with wonderful roses where with he keeps the world at bay’? But alas, Meridith wrote in English, and to-day I cannot fence myself in except with Latin. The English tongue has become unspeakably vulgar and our literary men only profane it the more. Do you remember that manifesto which our ‘representative men of letters’ jointly issued some time at the beginning of the war? When the war began they should have jointly retired into a monastery, or staying in the world they should have sought the monastic gift of silence. The English language is now unfitted not only for the speech but even for the thought of a man of sensibility. The violence of the popular our very thought. A truly philosophic thought cannot now be conceived or expressed in English. There is nought but Latin left to save the dignity of culture. I see you start. Tell me honestly, Simpson, aren’t you afraid now to utter the English word culture. I mean, aren’t you afraid of being misunderstood? Wouldn’t you rather say Kultur if you definitely imply a sneer, and speak of the humanities, perhaps, if you are quite sure you don’t imply a sneer, and if by chance you do happen to use the word culture, doesn’t it need a little self-collection to have this certainty of the absence of a sneer in you mental background? In short, my dear fellow, a beautiful English word with beautiful associations has been dragged in the mire. A sensitive writer or speaker will not touch it. This is one word; there are others, honour, justice, even philosophy, The German militarists may have violated the neutrality of Belgium but English journalists have done worse-they have violated the neutrality of words, they have done a wrong to humanity, for in translation even Japanese and Hindustani neutral words will take the English colour, as they bear the current English import. Yes, our journalists have made beautiful English words ugly by a vulgar annexation, and put neutral words out of circulation by making their use, except in certain contexts, unpatriotic. This war has been called a war on German trade-it certainly is a war on English words. There is good red blood in England, and there is plenty of iron, but our journalists would seem to imply that blood and iron are made in Germany. The same use of certain English words is as unpatriotic as a suave delight in a glass of Munich beer, or a serene absorption in a Turkish cigarette. Go and tell a ‘Daily Mail’ reader in the Tube that you are a philosopher, and he will shout at you, ‘Yah Bernhardi!’ Before the war the ‘Daily Mail’ did not know the word philosophy; then it dragged the word out of its decent seclusion, only to misapply it; now it is on the common tongue, and the P section of the Oxford Dictionary is antiquated while it is hardly out of the press. The pity of it is that our men of letters, our poets and thinkers directly countenance the corruption of our language. Whatever this war is, it is not a poet’s war. There is nothing even remotely poetical about it. It is run by machinery. But I forget-there was one genuinely poetical incident in the course of this war-the reading of the Catalogue of Indian Princes in the House of Commons. It had all the characteristics of poetry – freshness, surprise, and simplicity, and the quality of truth. It was a breath from an earlier world, a world of naïve ardour for the fight, a world of knightly sentiment and knightly speech. The tale of the prince who offered ‘his troops, his treasury, and his jewels,’ and that other prince of seventy who came to the fight with his grandson of sixteen, though a modern English tale, could bear to be told in Greek. The incident was truly poetical; the House of Commons was stupefied for a moment by this strange experience; then it recovered itself, and, as you know, burst into vulgar applause. The incident was closed.”
“Don’t be too hard on the poets,” pleaded Simpson. “After all, poets are not intelligent beings. They are as much creatures of routine as postmen. Love and War, they have been trained to believe, will wait for no man-no, not even for the Laureate.”
“But what of our thinkers?” wailed Rathbone. “I wish our thinkers had thought enough at some time to realise that it befits them occasionally to sit still and say nothing. Or, if they must always think aloud, why don’t they sometimes think in Latin? At the present moment it would be exceedingly good for them. For one thing their thoughts would be more sane, they would be sure of what they were thinking, the comparative unfamiliarity of a dead language would compel them to weigh their words without taking their words at the current valuation of the newspapers; and if, even so, the popular passion in them should prove too vehement, but few people would know of their shame. Quite probably the mere use of a passionless, dead tongue would diver their thoughts gently to gentle themes; they would recover that serenity, tolerance, and, calm regard for truth without which a thinker is only half a thinker–that is to say, quite an ordinary person; they would cease to be topical, and by the grace that was in them in the days of blessedness and peace, they would remain men of letters and not become journalists. And id a thinker has erred, he should be compelled now, as a means of recovering lost grace, to give us a discourse in, Latin on an innocent enthusiasm. How much better as an example to his brethren and a solace to us, if in these troubled times Chesterton had published a treatise on beer in Latin, instead of that flaming topical pamphlet of. His on the Barbarism of Berlin in English?”
“But,” I said, “I thought Chesterton’s pamphlet was remarkably sane and collected.”
“It appears to be,” said Rathbone, “but it is not really. Chesterton is not himself. This war has turned the writer of paradoxes into a writer of platitudes. The paradoxes were true, but the platitudes are not. A platitude can only contain half the truth, else it could never attain the state of a platitude, for it would miss the condition of popularity. Truths do not bear repetition, but half-truths do. The Barbarism of Berlin! That bears repetition. The Barbarism of Berlin and London! Does that bear repetition? No. The Refusal of Reciprocity is charged to Berlin. The frame of mind is equally common in London. Why, there was a lengthy letter in the ‘Morning Post’ the other day, stating that the Imperial bond implies either common citizenship or common subjecthood, but explicitly denying that in either case it implies common rights. The Indian is either your fellow-citizen or your fellow-subject, but in neither case has he fellow rights with you. This is more than a Refusal-it is a Robbery of Reciprocity. Which is the greater barbarism- to refuse to give or to rob? So with the Appetite of Tyranny; so with the Escape of Folly. Chesterton is exasperated: by the shortage of logic in Berlin; an oriental reading Chesterton’s pamphlet would be distressed by the equally deplorable shortage of that commodity in London. Where is the pamphlet, Simpson – you have it in your pocket, haven’t you? ‘In these slight notes,’ says Chesterton, ‘I have suggested the principal strong points of the Prussian character. A failure in honour which almost amounts to a failure in memory; an egomania that is honestly blind to the fact that the other party is an ego; and, above all, an actual itch for tyranny and interference, the devil which everywhere torments the idle and the proud. To these must be added a certain mental shapelessness which can expand or contract without reference to reason or record; a potential infinity of excuses.’ An Oriental may or may not accept this definition of barbarism. If he does, he must reason from it, that while Turks and Indians certainly are not barbarians, Englishmen and Prussians as certainly are. And yet, throughout his pamphlet, Chesterton suggests that the Oriental is, in some subtle way, the typical barbarian. Our cultured Mahomedan friends might wonder at the discreetness of a definition which defines, but refuses somehow to comprise and exclude. They might, of course, consider this a proof of refinement; on the other hand, they might consider it a further instance of the barbarism of London-a failure in imagination which almost amounts to a failure in feeling.
“The war then is merely a war of barbarians – between a barbarian in possession and a barbarian who covets possession. But men of letters still aspire to discuss its principle in academic fashion. So far as I can see only one principle clearly emerges from the conflict. ‘The Kaiser,’ says Chesterton, ‘ after explaining to his troops how important it was to avoid Eastern Barbarism, instantly commanded them to become Eastern, Barbarians.’ ‘To crush militarism,’ says the, English Press, ‘we must become militarists.’ You and I, Simpson, may agree that Eastern Barbarism does not deserve to be avoided, and that militarism does not deserve, to be crushed; but Germans and Englishmen alike agree on the abstract principle that to cast out the devil you may, become the devil. Our men of letters follow the Government, and take the principle for granted; they refuse to discuss Eastern Barbarism, and Militarism on their merits-in short, they refuse to discuss the devil. But it is very important for us to know who the devil is, and exactly how far we may go in trying to cast him out. That is why I read the scholastic theologians, and do not read the ‘Daily Mail ’
“Yes, resume your Latin, Simpson. There is no popular Press in Latin, and Latin words still retain. Their true, meanings. But there were popular speeches in Latin, and I don’t read Cicero. There were chronicle; of dispatches from the front, and I don’t read Tacitus- We have at last found a use for the despised Latin of the Middle Ages; this is the hedge wherewith I keep the world at bay. The middle ages possess a familiar knowledge of the devil which we have lost – and scholastic theologians can be so charmingly confidential.” “And isn’t Chesterton confidential?” asked Simpson.
“Yes, he is confidential, but he fails somehow to give us a satisfying sense of the devil as an entity. He does not give us a sense of sin.”
Lionel de Fonseka.