Anticipations

It has been supposed that, since the real income of the newspaper is derived from advertisements, large advertisers will combine in the future to own papers confined to the advertisements of their specific wares. Some such monopoly is already attempted; several publishing firms own or partially own a number of provincial papers, which they adorn with strange "Book Chat" columns conspicuously deficient in their information; and a well-known cycle tyre firm supplies "Cycling" columns that are mere pedestals for the Head-of-King-Charles make of tyre. Many quack firms publish and give away annual almanacks replete with economical illustrations, offensive details, and bad jokes. But I venture to think, in spite of such phenomena, that these suggestions and attempts are made with a certain disregard of the essential conditions of sound advertisement. Sound advertisement consists in perpetual alertness and newness, in appearance in new places and in new aspects, in the constant access to fresh minds. The devotion of a newspaper to the interest of one particular make of a commodity or group of commodities will inevitably rob its advertisement department of most of its interest for the habitual readers of the paper. That is to say, the newspaper will fail in what is one of the chief attractions of a good newspaper. Moreover, such a devotion will react upon all the other matter in the paper, because the editor will need to be constantly alert to exclude seditious reflections upon the Health-Extract-of-Horse-Flesh or Saved-by-Boiling-Jam. His sense of this relation will taint his self-respect and make him a less capable editor than a man whose sole affair is to keep his paper interesting. To these more interesting rival papers the excluded competitor will be driven, and the reader will follow in his wake. There is little more wisdom in the proprietor of an article in popular demand buying or creating a newspaper to contain all his advertisements than in his buying a coal pit for the same purpose. Such a privacy of advertisement will never work, I think, on a large scale; it is probably at or near its maximum development now, and this anticipation of the advertiser-owned paper, like that of hourly papers, and that wonderfully powerful cosmic newspaper syndicate, is simply another instance of prophesying based only on a present trend, an expansion of the obvious, instead of an analysis of determining forces.

36

One striking illustration of the distinctive possibilities of democratic government came to light during the last term of office of the present patriotic British Government. As a demonstration of patriotism large sums of money were voted annually for the purpose of building warships, and the patriotic common man paid the taxes gladly with a dream of irresistible naval predominance to sweeten the payment. But the money was not spent on warships; only a portion of it was spent, and the rest remained to make a surplus and warm the heart of the common man in his tax-paying capacity. This artful dodge was repeated for several years; the artful dodger is now a peer, no doubt abjectly respected, and nobody in the most patriotic party so far evolved is a bit the worse for it. In the organizing expedients of all popular governments, as in the prospectuses of unsound companies, the disposition is to exaggerate the nominal capital at the expense of the working efficiency. Democratic armies and navies are always short, and probably will always be short, of ammunition, paint, training and reserve stores; battalions and ships, since they count as units, are over-numerous and go short-handed, and democratic army reform almost invariably works out to some device for multiplying units by fission, and counting men three times instead of twice in some ingenious and plausible way. And this must be so, because the sort of men who come inevitably to power under democratic conditions are men trained by all the conditions of their lives to so set appearances before realities as at last to become utterly incapable of realities.

37

Even along such vast frontiers as the Russian and Austrian, for example, where M. Bloch anticipates war will be begun with an invasion of clouds of Russian cavalry and great cavalry battles, I am inclined to think this deadlock of essentially defensive marksmen may still be the more probable thing. Small bodies of cyclist riflemen would rush forward to meet the advancing clouds of cavalry, would drop into invisible ambushes, and announce their presence – in unknown numbers – with carefully aimed shots difficult to locate. A small number of such men could always begin their fight with a surprise at the most advantageous moment, and they would be able to make themselves very deadly against a comparatively powerful frontal attack. If at last the attack were driven home before supports came up to the defenders, they would still be able to cycle away, comparatively immune. To attempt even very wide flanking movements against such a snatched position would be simply to run risks of blundering upon similar ambushes. The clouds of cavalry would have to spread into thin lines at last and go forward with the rifle. Invading clouds of cyclists would be in no better case. A conflict of cyclists against cyclists over a country too spacious for unbroken lines, would still, I think, leave the struggle essentially unchanged. The advance of small unsupported bodies would be the wildest and most unprofitable adventure; every advance would have to be made behind a screen of scouts, and, given a practical equality in the numbers and manhood of the two forces, these screens would speedily become simply very attenuated lines.

38

So far, pestilence has been a feature of almost every sustained war in the world, but there is really no reason whatever why it should be so. There is no reason, indeed, why a soldier upon active service on the victorious side should go without a night's rest or miss a meal. If he does, there is muddle and want of foresight somewhere, and that our hypothesis excludes.

39

Lady Maud Rolleston, in her very interesting Yeoman Service, complains of the Boers killing an engine-driver during an attack on a train at Kroonstadt, "which was," she writes, "an abominable action, as he is, in law, a non-combatant." The implicit assumption of this complaint would cover the engineers of an ironclad or the guides of a night attack, everybody, in fact, who was not positively weapon in hand.

40

Experiments will probably be made in the direction of armoured guns, armoured search-light carriages, and armoured shelters for men, that will admit of being pushed forward over rifle-swept ground. To such possibilities, to possibilities even of a sort of land ironclad, my inductive reason inclines; the armoured train seems indeed a distinct beginning of this sort of thing, but my imagination proffers nothing but a vision of wheels smashed by shells, iron tortoises gallantly rushed by hidden men, and unhappy marksmen and engineers being shot at as they bolt from some such monster overset. The fact of it is, I detest and fear these thick, slow, essentially defensive methods, either for land or sea fighting. I believe invincibly that the side that can go fastest and hit hardest will always win, with or without or in spite of massive defences, and no ingenuity in devising the massive defence will shake that belief.

41

Or, in deference to the Rules of War, fire them out of guns of trivial carrying power.

42

A curious result might very possibly follow a success of submarines on the part of a naval power finally found to be weaker and defeated. The victorious power might decide that a narrow sea was no longer, under the new conditions, a comfortable boundary line, and might insist on marking its boundary along the high-water mark of its adversary's adjacent coasts.

43

There comes to hand as I correct these proofs a very typical illustration of the atmosphere of really almost imbecile patronage in which the British private soldier lives. It is a circular from some one at Lydd, some one who evidently cannot even write English, but who is nevertheless begging for an iron hut in which to inflict lessons on our soldiers. "At present," says this circular, "it is pretty to see in the Home a group of Gunners busily occupied in wool-work or learning basket-making, whilst one of their number sings or recites, and others are playing games or letter-writing, but even quite recently the members of the Bible Reading Union and one of the ladies might have been seen painfully crowded behind screens, choosing the 'Golden Text' with lowered voices, and trying to pray 'without distraction,' whilst at the other end of the room men were having supper, and halfway down a dozen Irish militia (who don't care to read, but are keen on a story) were gathered round another lady, who was telling them an amusing temperance tale, trying to speak so that the Bible readers should not hear her and yet that the Leinsters should was a difficulty, but when the Irishmen begged for a song – difficulty became impossibility, and their friend had to say, 'No.' Yet this is just the double work required in Soldiers' Homes, and above all at Lydd, where there is so little safe amusement to be had in camp, and none in the village." These poor youngsters go from this "safe amusement" under the loving care of "lady workers," this life of limitation, make-believe and spiritual servitude that a self-respecting negro would find intolerable, into a warfare that exacts initiative and a freely acting intelligence from all who take part in it, under the bitterest penalties of shame and death. What can you expect of them? And how can you expect any men of capacity and energy, any men even of mediocre self-respect to knowingly place themselves under the tutelage of the sort of people who dominate these organized degradations? I am amazed the army gets so many capable recruits as it does. And while the private lives under these conditions, the would-be capable officer stifles amidst equally impossible surroundings. He must associate with the uneducated products of the public schools, and listen to their chatter about the "sports" that delight them, suffer social indignities from the "army woman," worry and waste money on needless clothes, and expect to end by being shamed or killed under some unfairly promoted incapable. Nothing illustrates the intellectual blankness of the British army better than its absolute dearth of military literature. No one would dream of gaining any profit by writing or publishing a book upon such a subject, for example, as mountain warfare in England, because not a dozen British officers would have the sense to buy such a book, and yet the British army is continually getting into scrapes in mountain districts. A few unselfish men like Major Peech find time to write an essay or so, and that is all. On the other hand, I find no less than five works in French on this subject in MM. Chapelet & Cie.'s list alone. On guerilla warfare again, and after two years of South Africa, while there is nothing in English but some scattered papers by Dr. T. Miller Maguire, there are nearly a dozen good books in French. As a supplement to these facts is the spectacle of the officers of the Guards telegraphing to Sir Thomas Lipton on the occasion of the defeat of his Shamrock II., "Hard luck. Be of good cheer. Brigade of Guards wish you every success." This is not the foolish enthusiasm of one or two subalterns, it is collective. They followed that yacht race with emotion! is a really important thing to them. No doubt the whole mess was in a state of extreme excitement. How can capable and active men be expected to live and work between this upper and that nether millstone? The British army not only does not attract ambitious, energetic men, it repels them. I must confess that I see no hope either in the rulers, the traditions, or the manhood of the British regular army, to forecast its escape from the bog of ignorance and negligence in which it wallows. Far better than any of projected reforms would it be to let the existing army severely alone, to cease to recruit for it, to retain (at the expense of its officers, assisted perhaps by subscriptions from ascendant people like Sir Thomas Lipton) its messes, its uniforms, its games, bands, entertainments, and splendid memories as an appendage of the Court, and to create, in absolute independence of it, battalions and batteries of efficient professional soldiers, without social prestige or social distinctions, without bands, dress uniforms, colours, chaplains or honorary colonels, and to embody these as a real marching army perpetually en route throughout the empire – a reading, thinking, experimenting army under an absolutely distinct war office, with its own colleges, depôts and training camps perpetually ready for war. I cannot help but think that, if a hint were taken from the Turbinia syndicate, a few enterprising persons of means and intelligence might do much by private experiment to supplement and replace the existing state of affairs.

44

Under the intoxication of the Keltic Renascence the most diverse sorts of human beings have foregathered and met face to face, and been photographed Pan-Keltically, and have no doubt gloated over these collective photographs, without any of them realizing, it seems, what a miscellaneous thing the Keltic race must be. There is nothing that may or may not be a Kelt, and I know, for example, professional Kelts who are, so far as face, manners, accents, morals, and ideals go, indistinguishable from other people who are, I am told, indisputably Assyroid Jews.

45

Is War Now Impossible? and see also footnote, p. 210.

46

It is entirely for their wealth that brewers have been ennobled in England, never because of their services as captains of a great industry. Indeed, these services have been typically poor. While these men were earning their peerages by the sort of proceedings that do secure men peerages under the British Crown, the German brewers were developing the art and science of brewing with remarkable energy and success. The Germans and Bohemians can now make light beers that the English brewers cannot even imitate; they are exporting beer to England in steadily increasing volume.

47

I foresee great scope for the ingenious persons who write so abundantly to the London evening papers upon etymological points, issues in heraldry, and the correct Union Jack, in the very pleasing topic of a possible Anglo-American flag (for use at first only on unofficial occasions).

48

In a large town like Folkestone, for example, it is practically impossible to buy any book but a "boomed" novel unless one has ascertained the names of the author, the book, the edition, and the publisher. There is no index in existence kept up to date that supplies these particulars. If, for example, one wants – as I want (1) to read all that I have not read of the work of Mr. Frank Stockton, (2) to read a book of essays by Professor Ray Lankaster the title of which I have forgotten, and (3) to buy the most convenient edition of the works of Swift, one has to continue wanting until the British Museum Library chances to get in one's way. The book-selling trade supplies no information at all on these points.

49

One of the least satisfactory features of the intellectual atmosphere of the present time is the absence of good controversy. To follow closely an honest and subtle controversy, and to have arrived at a definite opinion upon some general question of real and practical interest and complicated reference, is assuredly the most educational exercise in the world – I would go so far as to say that no person is completely educated who has not done as much. The memorable discussions in which Huxley figured, for example, were extraordinarily stimulating. We lack that sort of thing now. A great number of people are expressing conflicting opinions upon all sorts of things, but there is a quite remarkable shirking of plain issues of debate. There is no answering back. There is much indirect answering, depreciation of the adversary, attempts to limit his publicity, restatements of the opposing opinion in a new way, but no conflict in the lists. We no longer fight obnoxious views, but assassinate them. From first to last, for example, there has been no honest discussion of the fundamental issues in the Boer War. Something may be due to the multiplication of magazines and newspapers, and the confusion of opinions that has scattered the controversy-following public. It is much to be regretted that the laws of copyright and the methods of publication stand in the way of annotated editions of works of current controversial value. For example, Mr. Andrew Lang has assailed the new edition of the "Golden Bough." His criticisms, which are, no doubt, very shrewd and penetrating, ought to be accessible with the text he criticizes. Yet numerous people will read his comments who will never read the "Golden Bough;" they will accept his dinted sword as proof of the slaughter of Mr. Fraser, and many will read the "Golden Bough" and never hear of Mr. Lang's comments. Why should it be so hopeless to suggest an edition of the "Golden Bough" with footnotes by Mr. Lang and Mr. Fraser's replies? There are all sorts of books to which Mr. Lang might add footnotes with infinite benefit to every one. Mr. Mallock, again, is going to explain how Science and Religion stand at the present time. If only some one would explain in the margin how Mr. Mallock stands, the thing would be complete. Such a book, again, as these "Anticipations" would stand a vast amount of controversial footnoting. It bristles with pegs for discussion – vacant pegs; it is written to provoke. I hope that some publisher, sooner or later, will do something of this kind, and will give us not only the text of an author's work, but a series of footnotes and appendices by reputable antagonists. The experiment, well handled, might prove successful enough to start a fashion – a very beneficial fashion for authors and readers alike. People would write twice as carefully and twice as clearly with that possible second edition (with footnotes by X and Y) in view. Imagine "The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture" as it might have been edited by the late Professor Huxley; Froude's edition of the "Grammar of Assent;" Mr. G. B. Shaw's edition of the works of Mr. Lecky; or the criticism of art and life of Ruskin, – the "Beauties of Ruskin" annotated by Mr. Whistler and carefully prepared for the press by Professor William James. Like the tomato and the cucumber, every book would carry its antidote wrapped about it. Impossible, you say. But is it? Or is it only unprecedented? If novelists will consent to the illustration of their stories by artists whose chief aim appears to be to contradict their statements, I do not see why controversial writers who believe their opinions are correct should object to the checking of their facts and logic by persons with a different way of thinking. Why should not men of opposite opinions collaborate in their discussion?

50

As, for example, that God is an omniscient mind. This is the last vestige of that barbaric theology which regarded God as a vigorous but uncertain old gentleman with a beard and an inordinate lust for praise and propitiation. The modern idea is, indeed, scarcely more reasonable than the one it has replaced. A mind thinks, and feels, and wills; it passes from phase to phase; thinking and willing are a succession of mental states which follow and replace one another. But omniscience is a complete knowledge, not only of the present state, but of all past and future states, and, since it is all there at any moment, it cannot conceivably pass from phase to phase, it is stagnant, infinite, and eternal. An omniscient mind is as impossible, therefore, as an omnipresent moving body. God is outside our mental scope; only by faith can we attain Him; our most lucid moments serve only to render clearer His inaccessibility to our intelligence. We stand a little way up in a scale of existences that may, indeed, point towards Him, but can never bring Him to our scope. As the fulness of the conscious mental existence of a man stands to the subconscious activities of an amœba or of a visceral ganglion cell, so our reason forces us to admit other possible mental existences may stand to us. But such an existence, inconceivably great as it would be to us, would be scarcely nearer that transcendental God in whom the serious men of the future will, as a class, believe.

51

It is an interesting byway from our main thesis to speculate on the spiritual pathology of the functionless wealthy, the half-educated independent women of the middle class, and the people of the Abyss. While the segregating new middle class, whose religious and moral development forms our main interest, is developing its spacious and confident Theism, there will, I imagine, be a steady decay in the various Protestant congregations. They have played a noble part in the history of the world, their spirit will live for ever, but their formulæ and organization wax old like a garment. Their moral austerity – that touch of contempt for the unsubstantial æsthetic, which has always distinguished Protestantism – is naturally repellent to the irresponsible rich and to artistic people of the weaker type, and the face of Protestantism has ever been firm even to hardness against the self-indulgent, the idler, and the prolific, useless poor. The rich as a class and the people of the Abyss, so far as they move towards any existing religious body, will be attracted by the moral kindliness, the picturesque organization and venerable tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. We are only in the very beginning of a great Roman Catholic revival. The diversified countryside of the coming time will show many a splendid cathedral, many an elaborate monastic palace, towering amidst the abounding colleges and technical schools. Along the moving platforms of the urban centre, and athwart the shining advertisements that will adorn them, will go the ceremonial procession, all glorious with banners and censer-bearers, and the meek blue-shaven priests and barefooted, rope-girdled, holy men. And the artful politician of the coming days, until the broom of the New Republic sweep him up, will arrange the miraculous planks of his platform always with an eye upon the priest. Within the ample sheltering arms of the Mother Church many eccentric cults will develop. The curious may study the works of M. Huysmans to learn of the mystical propitiation of God, Who made heaven and earth, by the bedsores of hysterical girls. The future as I see it swarms with Durtals and Sister Teresas; countless ecstatic nuns, holding their Maker as it were in deliciæ, will shelter from the world in simple but costly refuges of refined austerity. Where miracles are needed, miracles will occur.

Except for a few queer people, nourished on "Maria Monk" and suchlike anti-papal pornography, I doubt if there will be any Protestants left among the irresponsible rich. Those who do not follow the main current will probably take up with weird science-denouncing sects of the faith-healing type, or with such pseudo-scientific gibberish as Theosophy. Mrs. Piper (in an inelegant attitude and with only the whites of her eyes showing) has restored the waning faith of Professor James in human immortality, and I do not see why that lady should stick at one dogma amidst the present quite insatiable demand for creeds. Shintoism and either a cleaned or, more probably, a scented Obi, might in vigorous hands be pushed to a very considerable success in the coming years; and I do not see any absolute impossibility in the idea of an after-dinner witch-smelling in Park Lane with a witchdoctor dressed in feathers. It might be made amazingly picturesque. People would attend it with an air of intellectual liberality, not, of course, believing in it absolutely, but admitting "there must be Something in it." That Something in it! "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God," and after that he is ready to do anything with his mind and soul. It is by faith we disbelieve.

And, of course, there will be much outspoken Atheism and Anti-religion of the type of the Parisian Devil-Worship imbecilities. Young men of means will determine to be "wicked." They will do silly things that will strike them as being indecent and blasphemous and dreadful – black masses and suchlike nonsense – and then they will get scared. The sort of thing it will be to shock orthodox maiden aunts and make Olympus ring with laughter. A taking sort of nonsense already loose, I find, among very young men is to say, "Understand, I am non-moral." Two thoroughly respectable young gentlemen coming from quite different circles have recently introduced their souls to me in this same formula. Both, I rejoice to remark, are married, both are steady and industrious young men, trustworthy in word and contract, dressed in accordance with current conceptions, and behaving with perfect decorum. One, no doubt for sinister ends, aspires to better the world through a Socialistic propaganda. That is all. But in a tight corner some day that silly little formula may just suffice to trip up one or other of these men. To many of the irresponsible rich, however, that little "Understand, I am non-moral" may prove of priceless worth.

52

Vide Mr. Archdall Read's excellent and suggestive book, "The Present Evolution of Man."