The Raft & Socrates Asks Why

by Eric Linklater

  SERGEANT

  If you don’t believe that Britain and the United States are in this God-damned war for a good reason, then nothing I can say will make any difference. Either you know, or you don’t know, and that’s all there is to it.

  PIPER

  He’s only a foreigner, Sergeant. He canna understand.

  SERGEANT

  I guess that’s so. Mr. Lincoln, sir, I’m sorry to find you in company like this. I’ve had enough of it, and if you take my advice, you won’t share it much longer. — Come on, buddy, let’s go. I like the Transit Camp better than this dump.

  PIPER

  I’m going to let them hear something first. — See you here, you in the blanket and you in the wig: when we gaed ower the causeway into that dismal and despairing island of Singapore, the wee Japs thought they had us fairly beat and finished. But we knew better. So we gave them a tune on the pipes that was mair than a tune, it was a promise we’d be back before long. And you’re going to hear that same tune for a promise that when Great Britain and America stand on the one side together, it’s bad policy to be on the other. Because we ken what’s right and we ken what’s wrong, me and the Sergeant, and there’s a difference between them that nothing can hide. Not even your argument. Now just you wait…

  SERGEANT

  Let ’em have it, Jock. Mr. Lincoln, sir, you better clear out same as we’re doing. The hell with civilians anyway…

  The SERGEANT’S further comment is luckily drowned in the din of pipes, for the PIPER, whose last words were intermitted with audible puffing as he filled his bag, is playing his regimental march: Hielan’ Laddie. For a few seconds the noise is almost deafening, but it dwindles rapidly as he and the SERGEANT march back to their camp.

  LINCOLN

  Socrates, those men made me feel a low-down ordinary creature.

  SOCRATES

  I was often put to shame by the natural honesty of the carpenters and stone-masons with whom I used to spend so much of my time in Athens. But to persuade a good man to think about the roots of his belief does him no harm. Indeed, it will make him a better man.

  The PIPER’S tune has awakened BEETHOVEN, and seemingly to no agreeable mood. For his voice is surly.

  BEETHOVEN

  What made that noise?

  LINCOLN

  A Scottish bagpipe.

  BEETHOVEN

  Only one? Thank God there were no more. — They say the Scots are good fighters.

  JOHNSON

  They have a reputation, sir, for aptitude in war.

  BEETHOVEN

  They must be very good fighters if their more civilized neighbours cannot prevent them playing such an infernal instrument as that. What was a Scotsman doing here?

  LINCOLN

  We were discussing with him why men go to war.

  BEETHOVEN

  Because they are fools. Man is two things: he is a fighting animal and a suffering animal. Suffering is a great part of our estate. But the majority are such fools that they don’t try to heal their suffering, but to escape from it. They are such dreadful fools that to escape from normal suffering they will jump out of the frying-pan into the fire. That is to say, out of peace into war. — Can anyone tell me what’s the time in Chicago?

  LINCOLN

  Chicago?

  BEETHOVEN

  I want to hear a concert there.

  ARDEN

  There’s a universal clock behind you, sir. — It’s a quarter to nine in Chicago.

  BEETHOVEN

  Then I can have another nap. I’ve been walking on the hills all day, and I’m tired.

  He yawns, noisily, and settles himself to sleep again.

  LINCOLN

  There is more in it than folly.

  JOHNSON

  Yes, sir, there is a great deal more. Those two soldiers were honest men, and the Scotsman showed the bare bone of their honesty when he said they knew the difference between right and wrong. That, sir, is the ultimate categorical distinction.

  VOLTAIRE

  I was disappointed in them. I had thought, from their first words, they took a realistic view of the world, and were capable of reason. But no. They are still subject to their tribal superstitions and local prejudice. They belong to the majority.

  JOHNSON

  Then, sir, I must think better of the majority. You do well to exalt the place of reason, for reason is perpetually being brought down by our baser parts. But in the moral sphere reason has two champions, and you have forgotten one of them. There is ratiocination, but there is also conscience. In a free man, whose mind has neither been corroded by injurious circumstance nor corrupted with pernicious doctrine, there is a free and vocal conscience. And those two soldiers, the American and the Scotsman, were speaking, sir, with the voice of conscience.

  LINCOLN

  They are good men, both of them.

  SOCRATES

  They know what they are fighting against. They have made so much clear. But I am still perplexed by the enormity of the war, and it does not really help me to know that Voltaire and the Sergeant, who so dislike each other, are in perfect though limited agreement about their immediate enemy.

  VOLTAIRE

  I discovered, many years ago, how impossible it was for a reasonable man to live within the personal dominion of a German autocrat. My poor dear Frederick, though his intentions were good, made life intolerable. And the Germans of to-day are infinitely worse than poor Frederick. He did try to improve a single mind — his own — but the Nazis, with greater zeal and more success, have undertaken the corruption of eighty million minds. Their manners are atrocious, their morals perverted, and their superstitions bestial. Yes, they are certainly the immediate enemy.

  SOCRATES

  It is, of course, far easier to recognise what is wrong than to envisage what is right. Especially in politics. Now the Allied nations, being in agreement about whom they are fighting against, will probably win the war. But unless they are in equal, agreement about the cause they are fighting for, they will not be able to make a good and fruitful peace. And I ask you yet again: are they in agreement? Does a positive cause yet exist? Lincoln has said that some people, perhaps many, hope to see a rule of law established and enforced by Great Britain, America, Russia, and China. That, I believe, would be a good thing. It is fairly clear that Germany and Japan will never respect anything but a strength much greater than their own. And therefore, when you have beaten them, you can make sure of peace only by exterminating them, or creating such a strength as they cannot fail to acknowledge. And as you will not exterminate them, because it is not in your nature to do such a thing, you should, I think, create your fourfold rule of law.

  But that, of itself, will not solve all your problems. A rule of law is only, as it were, the roof and walls of a temple. What makes a temple useful and significant is the sort of worship that is practised there. Are your people, when they have built their walls upon those cornerstones, going to worship what is good, and only what is good? They desire peace, but to be fruitful, peace must be married to justice. Now have your Allies made their minds clear about the decrees and temper of their justice? Those men who have died, your American Sergeant and your Scottish Piper, want their children to be given a better chance than they had of living freely and fully, with security in their own homes and with goodwill in their hearts. But if that is to come about there must be a sufficiency of men who are already determined to bring it about, and know how to begin. Are there such men? Men who are not self-seeking, but desire the good of others. Do they see clearly what a good world would be like, and are they strong enough, in love and resolution, to set to work?

  LINCOLN

  In the heat of conflict, when all their energy is concentrated on the earliest possible defeat of the enemy, our people can hardly sit down to make detailed plans for the future.

  SOCRATES

  It is only when his fire is hot that the blacksmith can give its shape to the weapon he is making. Either the war
is a mere struggle for survival, like the fighting of animals, or it is creative. But if the Allies do not know what they are trying to make, they will waste both time and metal.

  ARDEN

  When you were alive, Socrates, you were a soldier yourself. You fought in several campaigns.

  SOCRATES

  Yes, I fought in the infantry.

  ARDEN

  Why?

  SOCRATES

  Now you are turning the tables on me. Well, my answer is that I fought for Athens.

  ARDEN

  Is that a sufficient answer?

  SOCRATES

  I was an Athenian citizen. My body, which had been nourished by Athens, belonged to Athens and therefore I could not honestly withhold it from her service. And my mind, which was free, I freely gave to Athens.

  ARDEN

  But you have not told us why.

  SOCRATES

  If you had known Athens, you would know the answer.… There was one of our sailors who had been to the Persian sea, where they fish for pearls, and there he had once seen a diver with a great pearl in either hand, which he held for display in the sunlight, and his face wore a look of almost heavenly joy, because he delighted equally in his strength and his good fortune. That was how Athens looked. The best of the Athenians were humanity in its most sinewy exaltation. High courage and lofty intelligence went hand-in-hand through the market-place. We did not copy our neighbour-states, but were an example to them. We were a democracy, but though all enjoyed an equal justice, the claim of excellence was quickly recognised. Unconstrained in our private intercourse, we showed always a reverence for authority and law, and while no one escaped labour, there was relaxation for all. We met danger with a light heart. We were lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivated the mind without loss of manliness. Wealth was not employed for ostentation, but in a sensible way, and though there was no disgrace in poverty, it was thought disgraceful if a man did nothing to avoid poverty. Nor did an Athenian citizen neglect the state because he had to take care of his household. We discussed everything, fully and freely, and we did not believe that discussion was an impediment to action. The great impediment, in our opinion, was the want of that knowledge which is gained by discussion. Athens was the school of all Hellas, and in the hour of trial Athens, alone among her contemporary states, showed herself not merely equal, but superior to her reputation.… When the sailor, coming home from the Persian sea, turned the point of Sunium, he saw glittering in the tall sky over the Acropolis the tip of Athene’s spear, and by that alone, he said, he was assured of happiness when he went ashore. Like the diver he had seen, Athens was holding pearls in her grasp, and such a life as I have told but a fragment of its worth.

  JOHNSON

  And yet, sir, those same Athenians condemned you to your death.

  SOCRATES

  That was in the time of their defeat, when they could not look upon the truth.

  ARDEN

  Socrates… don’t you think it may be a sort of omen that Greece was the first of the Allied nations to win a victory? When Mussolini threw those stuffed divisions of his into Albania, Greece came to life again in the old way. There was that fearful campaign in the mountains, and the Italians were defeated. It was the Greeks who opened the scoring for us. I was dead by then, of course, but I remember watching the world, and everywhere on our side you could see men draw breath again, as if they too had come to life. There was some quality in the Greek army, in the people of Greece, that was more than ordinary courage and determination. It was like a religion. I suppose it was a religion. The old religion that made Athene, the goddess of wisdom, a warrior-goddess. And from that time, the time of the taking of Argyrokastro and Koritsa, you could see in England the waking of a new confidence. The English had made up their minds to go down fighting, if they had to go down — you remember the joke we made after Dunkirk, We’ve got into the final now — but then, when Greece began to fight, they saw the glint of victory, as if, like your sailor, they had seen the light on Athene’s spear.

  VOLTAIRE

  The English, my dear Arden, are unlikely to have seen any such thing. You are suggesting, of course, that when England and her friends have won the war, they will create a new age of enlightened humanism like the inspired and eager liberalism of Athens in the time of Pericles. But no, my friend, no. The English are too fond of horses. In the old fable, you remember, Athene and Poseidon were in competition for the possession of Athens, and it was decided by the gods that whichever invented the most useful addition to human life should win the prize. Thereupon Poseidon produced a horse, and Athene planted an olive tree. The gods gave Athene the award, but had they been Englishmen, can you doubt that Poseidon would have got it?

  JOHNSON

  Sir, the English have now transferred their affection from horses to machinery.

  VOLTAIRE

  You astonish me, sir. Yet they have always been notorious for eccentricity, and they are, in addition, capable of seeing where advantage lies. — Arden, I may have to modify my previous opinion. Could your fellow-countrymen perceive that an age of enlightenment would truly profit them, they might set about establishing it. But you would have to convince them that the light on Athene’s spear was the glitter of pure gold.

  ARDEN

  Convince them, you mean, that a guaranteed peace would be worth while? That a world where everyone could fill his mind and his stomach, and hear the truth and rely on justice, would be better than a world of insecurity and hunger and fear? Do they need to be convinced of that? Doesn’t common sense tell them so?

  VOLTAIRE

  Come, come, my dear boy, that is dangerous talk. To propose governing the world by good sense is to preach the most drastic form of revolution. Only an Englishman would dare suggest it, for only the English will tolerate the very excesses of free thinking.

  ARDEN

  But everyone of my age knows, and says it openly, that there must be more common sense in government. More understanding and a better vision. The world was only a jungle to begin with, but men — our sort of men — made it fit to live in. And if they have done so much, they can do more. And they’re going to!

  VOLTAIRE

  Your young men, I hope, will not be too impatient. They must remember, for one thing, that the English have always hated compulsion, and therefore it would be impolitic to force them into good sense, for fear they turn against it, as if it were another Germany. You should rather plant your seeds of enlightenment quite furtively, and let them grow at first in seclusion, and then apparently in defiance of authority. By such means you will make them popular, and authority itself may welcome the appearance of novelties which it would have liked to sow by Act of Parliament, but dared not lest the people suspected it of tyranny. It would be useful to begin your campaign in a few selected schools. There are so many varieties of school in England that no one can possibly know what is going on there.

  ARDEN

  My brother is a schoolmaster. Or he was, before the war. He’s a soldier now, somewhere in the Western Desert. He got the sack from one school when he told the Head that his system of teaching was worthless, because he had never discovered the difference between education and instruction.

  VOLTAIRE

  An excellent young man. A soldier, you say? A General, I must suppose.

  ARDEN

  No, he’s a Sergeant.

  VOLTAIRE

  Let us hope he will become a General very soon. How right he was to insist on such a vital difference! For instruction teaches us to work, which is necessary, but education how to live, which ought to be delicious. They are, I am told, about to extend the school-age in England. They will extend it to seventy, I hope. And your brother was discharged, you say?

  ARDEN

  But a month later he got a better job in a bigger school.

  VOLTAIRE

  Now there you see the benevolence and breadth of English life and the English mind! They are elastic, not
rigid. When you abolished the tyranny of kingship, you also destroyed the despotism of uniformity. Almost do I begin to share your confidence, Arden. When I lived in England I knew Pope, and Swift, and Congreve. The good Berkeley was preaching and philosophising, Newton was still alive, and in the London taverns you could see their compatriots, men broadly built, red-faced, untouched by any thought — you would say — except of the beer and beefsteak pudding which they digested with such prodigious appetite. Yes, in that soil it is possible that anything may grow. Anything at all. Even good.