THREE NOTES
I. ON FEMALE SUFFRAGE
Not wishing to overload this long essay with too many parentheses, apart from its thesis of progress and precedent, I append here three notes on points of detail that may possibly be misunderstood.
The first refers to the female controversy. It may seem to many that I dismiss too curtly the contention that all women should have votes, even if most women do not desire them. It is constantly said in this connection that males have received the vote (the agricultural laborers for instance) when only a minority of them were in favor of it. Mr. Galsworthy, one of the few fine fighting intellects of our time, has talked this language in the "Nation." Now, broadly, I have only to answer here, as everywhere in this book, that history is not a toboggan slide, but a road to be reconsidered and even retraced. If we really forced General Elections upon free laborers who definitely disliked General Elections, then it was a thoroughly undemocratic thing to do; if we are democrats we ought to undo it. We want the will of the people, not the votes of the people; and to give a man a vote against his will is to make voting more valuable than the democracy it declares.
But this analogy is false, for a plain and particular reason. Many voteless women regard a vote as unwomanly. Nobody says that most voteless men regarded a vote as unmanly. Nobody says that any voteless men regarded it as unmanly. Not in the stillest hamlet or the most stagnant fen could you find a yokel or a tramp who thought he lost his sexual dignity by being part of a political mob. If he did not care about a vote it was solely because he did not know about a vote; he did not understand the word any better than Bimetallism. His opposition, if it existed, was merely negative. His indifference to a vote was really indifference.
But the female sentiment against the franchise, whatever its size, is positive. It is not negative; it is by no means indifferent. Such women as are opposed to the change regard it (rightly or wrongly) as unfeminine. That is, as insulting certain affirmative traditions to which they are attached. You may think such a view prejudiced; but I violently deny that any democrat has a right to override such prejudices, if they are popular and positive. Thus he would not have a right to make millions of Moslems vote with a cross if they had a prejudice in favor of voting with a crescent. Unless this is admitted, democracy is a farce we need scarcely keep up. If it is admitted, the Suffragists have not merely to awaken an indifferent, but to convert a hostile majority.
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II. ON CLEANLINESS IN EDUCATION
On re-reading my protest, which I honestly think much needed, against our heathen idolatry of mere ablution, I see that it may possibly be misread. I hasten to say that I think washing a most important thing to be taught both to rich and poor. I do not attack the positive but the relative position of soap. Let it be insisted on even as much as now; but let other things be insisted on much more. I am even ready to admit that cleanliness is next to godliness; but the moderns will not even admit godliness to be next to cleanliness. In their talk about Thomas Becket and such saints and heroes they make soap more important than soul; they reject godliness whenever it is not cleanliness. If we resent this about remote saints and heroes, we should resent it more about the many saints and heroes of the slums, whose unclean hands cleanse the world. Dirt is evil chiefly as evidence of sloth; but the fact remains that the classes that wash most are those that work least. Concerning these, the practical course is simple; soap should be urged on them and advertised as what it is--a luxury. With regard to the poor also the practical course is not hard to harmonize with our thesis. If we want to give poor people soap we must set out deliberately to give them luxuries. If we will not make them rich enough to be clean, then emphatically we must do what we did with the saints. We must reverence them for being dirty.
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III. ON PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP
I have not dealt with any details touching distributed ownership, or its possibility in England, for the reason stated in the text. This book deals with what is wrong, wrong in our root of argument and effort. This wrong is, I say, that we will go forward because we dare not go back. Thus the Socialist says that property is already concentrated into Trusts and Stores: the only hope is to concentrate it further in the State. I say the only hope is to unconcentrate it; that is, to repent and return; the only step forward is the step backward.
But in connection with this distribution I have laid myself open to another potential mistake. In speaking of a sweeping redistribution, I speak of decision in the aim, not necessarily of abruptness in the means. It is not at all too late to restore an approximately rational state of English possessions without any mere confiscation. A policy of buying out landlordism, steadily adopted in England as it has already been adopted in Ireland (notably in Mr. Wyndham's wise and fruitful Act), would in a very short time release the lower end of the see-saw and make the whole plank swing more level. The objection to this course is not at all that it would not do, only that it will not be done. If we leave things as they are, there will almost certainly be a crash of confiscation. If we hesitate, we shall soon have to hurry. But if we start doing it quickly we have still time to do it slowly.
This point, however, is not essential to my book. All I have to urge between these two boards is that I dislike the big Whiteley shop, and that I dislike Socialism because it will (according to Socialists) be so like that shop. It is its fulfilment, not its reversal. I do not object to Socialism because it will revolutionize our commerce, but because it will leave it so horribly the same.
THE WILD KNIGHT
AND OTHER POEMS
BY
GILBERT CHESTERTON
NOTE
My thanks are due to the Editors of the _Outlook_ and the _Speaker_ for the kind permission they have given me to reprint a considerable number of the following poems. They have been selected and arranged rather with a view to unity of spirit than to unity of time or value; many of them being juvenile.
CONTENTS
BY THE BABE UNBORN
THE WORLD'S LOVER
THE SKELETON
A CHORD OF COLOUR
THE HAPPY MAN
THE UNPARDONABLE SIN
A NOVELTY
ULTIMATE
THE DONKEY
THE BEATIFIC VISION
THE HOPE OF THE STREETS
ECCLESIASTES
SONG OF THE CHILDREN
THE FISH
GOLD LEAVES
THOU SHALT NOT KILL A CERTAIN EVENING
A MAN AND HIS IMAGE
THE MARINER
THE TRIUMPH OF MAN
CYCLOPEAN
JOSEPH
MODERN ELFLAND
ETERNITIES
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
ALONE
KING'S CROSS STATION
THE HUMAN TREE
TO THEM THAT MOURN
THE OUTLAW
BEHIND
THE END OF FEAR
THE HOLY OF HOLIES
THE MIRROR OF MADMEN
E. C. B.
THE DESECRATERS
AN ALLIANCE
THE ANCIENT OF DAYS
THE LAST MASQUERADE
THE EARTH'S SHAME
VANITY
THE LAMP POST
THE PESSIMIST
A FAIRY TALE
A PORTRAIT
FEMINA CONTRA MUNDUM
TO A CERTAIN NATION
THE PRAISE OF DUST
THE BALLAD OF THE BATTLE OF GIBEON
'VULGARISED'
THE BALLAD OF GOD-MAKERS
AT NIGHT
THE WOODCUTTER
ART COLOURS
THE TWO WOMEN
THE WILD KNIGHT
_Another tattered rhymster in the ring, With but the old plea to the sneering schools, That on him too, some secret night in spring Came the old frenzy of a hundred fools
To make some thing: the old want dark and deep, The thirst of men, the hunger of the stars, Since first it tinged even the Eternal's sleep, With monstrous drea
ms of trees and towns and mars.
When all He made for the first time He saw, Scattering stars as misers shake their pelf. Then in the last strange wrath broke His own law, And made a graven image of Himself._
BY THE BABE UNBORN
If trees were tall and grasses short, As in some crazy tale, If here and there a sea were blue Beyond the breaking pale,
If a fixed fire hung in the air To warm me one day through, If deep green hair grew on great hills, I know what I should do.
In dark I lie: dreaming that there Are great eyes cold or kind, And twisted streets and silent doors, And living men behind.
Let storm-clouds come: better an hour, And leave to weep and fight, Than all the ages I have ruled The empires of the night.
I think that if they gave me leave Within that world to stand, I would be good through all the day I spent in fairyland.
They should not hear a word from me Of selfishness or scorn, If only I could find the door, If only I were born.
THE WORLD'S LOVER
My eyes are full of lonely mirth: Reeling with want and worn with scars, For pride of every stone on earth, I shake my spear at all the stars.
A live bat beats my crest above, Lean foxes nose where I have trod, And on my naked face the love Which is the loneliness of God.
Outlawed: since that great day gone by-- When before prince and pope and queen I stood and spoke a blasphemy-- 'Behold the summer leaves are green.'
They cursed me: what was that to me Who in that summer darkness furled, With but an owl and snail to see, Had blessed and conquered all the world?
They bound me to the scourging-stake, They laid their whips of thorn on me; I wept to see the green rods break, Though blood be beautiful to see.
Beneath the gallows' foot abhorred The crowds cry 'Crucify!' and 'Kill!' Higher the priests sing, 'Praise the Lord, The warlock dies'; and higher still
Shall heaven and earth hear one cry sent Even from the hideous gibbet height, 'Praise to the Lord Omnipotent, The vultures have a feast to-night.'
THE SKELETON
Chattering finch and water-fly Are not merrier than I; Here among the flowers I lie Laughing everlastingly. No: I may not tell the best; Surely, friends, I might have guessed Death was but the good King's jest, It was hid so carefully.
A CHORD OF COLOUR
My Lady clad herself in grey, That caught and clung about her throat; Then all the long grey winter day On me a living splendour smote; And why grey palmers holy are, And why grey minsters great in story, And grey skies ring the morning star, And grey hairs are a crown of glory.
My Lady clad herself in green, Like meadows where the wind-waves pass; Then round my spirit spread, I ween, A splendour of forgotten grass. Then all that dropped of stem or sod, Hoarded as emeralds might be, I bowed to every bush, and trod Amid the live grass fearfully.
My Lady clad herself in blue, Then on me, like the seer long gone, The likeness of a sapphire grew, The throne of him that sat thereon. Then knew I why the Fashioner Splashed reckless blue on sky and sea; And ere 'twas good enough for her, He tried it on Eternity.
Beneath the gnarled old Knowledge-tree Sat, like an owl, the evil sage: 'The World's a bubble,' solemnly He read, and turned a second page. 'A bubble, then, old crow,' I cried, 'God keep you in your weary wit! 'A bubble--have you ever spied 'The colours I have seen on it?'
THE HAPPY MAN
To teach the grey earth like a child, To bid the heavens repent, I only ask from Fate the gift Of one man well content.
Him will I find: though when in vain I search the feast and mart, The fading flowers of liberty, The painted masks of art.
I only find him at the last, On one old hill where nod Golgotha's ghastly trinity-- Three persons and one god.
THE UNPARDONABLE SIN
I do not cry, beloved, neither curse. Silence and strength, these two at least are good. He gave me sun and stars and ought He could, But not a woman's love; for that is hers.
He sealed her heart from sage and questioner-- Yea, with seven seals, as he has sealed the grave. And if she give it to a drunken slave, The Day of Judgment shall not challenge her.
Only this much: if one, deserving well, Touching your thin young hands and making suit, Feel not himself a crawling thing, a brute, Buried and bricked in a forgotten hell;
Prophet and poet be he over sod, Prince among angels in the highest place, God help me, I will smite him on the face, Before the glory of the face of God.
A NOVELTY
Why should I care for the Ages Because they are old and grey? To me, like sudden laughter, The stars are fresh and gay; The world is a daring fancy, And finished yesterday.
Why should I bow to the Ages Because they were drear and dry? Slow trees and ripening meadows For me go roaring by, A living charge, a struggle To escalade the sky.
The eternal suns and systems, Solid and silent all, To me are stars of an instant, Only the fires that fall From God's good rocket, rising On this night of carnival.
ULTIMATE
The vision of a haloed host That weep around an empty throne; And, aureoles dark and angels dead, Man with his own life stands alone.
'I am,' he says his bankrupt creed: 'I am,' and is again a clod: The sparrow starts, the grasses stir, For he has said the name of God.
THE DONKEY
When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born;
With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings, The devil's walking parody On all four-footed things.
The tattered outlaw of the earth, Of ancient crooked will; Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb, I keep my secret still.
The Essential G. K. Chesterton Page 486
