by Various
CHAPTER X
CONVERSATIONS
IT must have been more than a week after my long talk with Conductor Lickrod that I was sitting one evening in the hotel with Mr. Johnson and a certain Francarian gentleman to whom he had introduced me, when the latter made a suggestion that has since proved very useful to me. Mr. Villele the Francarian is a short and rather stout man of middle age, with a pair of merry black eyes, a swarthy complexion, and dark hair beginning to turn grey. He professes to find Meccania and the Meccanians amusing, but I suspect from the nature of his sarcasms that he entertains a deep hatred of them. We were talking of my journal when he said, "And what is the use of it?"
"Well," I said, "I do not flatter myself that I can produce a great literary work, but the facts I have been able to place on record are so interesting in themselves that I believe my countrymen would welcome a plain straightforward account of my visit to this most extraordinary country."
"I have heard," he said, "that the Chinese have very good verbal memories. Have you committed your record to memory in its entirety?"
"Why should I?" I replied; "it is to save my memory that I am taking the trouble of making such full notes, even of such things as conversations."
"And how do you propose to get your journal out of the country?"
"I propose to take it with me when I return," I said.
At this he turned to Johnson and laughed, but immediately apologised for his apparent rudeness.
"And what about the Censor?" he asked.
"Surely," I replied, "these people take such precautions not to let us foreigners see anything they do not want us to see, that they cannot object to a faithful record being made of what they do permit us to see!"
"Then you have not even read Regulation 79 of the Law concerning Foreign Observers."
"What is that?" I asked.
"Simply that foreigners are not allowed to take out of the country anything they have not been permitted to bring in, except with the consent of the Chief Inspector of Foreign Observers."
"And you think they will object?"
"I have not the slightest doubt."
"But it is written partly in Chinese; they would have to translate it."
"All the more reason for detaining it. If you ever get it again, it will be in a few years, after it has been translated for the benefit of the Sociological Section of the Ministry of Culture."
"What do you advise me to do, then?" I asked. "Have you any friends at the Chinese Embassy?" he asked.
"I have no personal friends. At least I have not troubled to inquire. I have had no business at the Embassy; there seemed no reason why I should trouble them."
"There is a fellow-countryman of yours here in Mecco who is persona grata with the Authorities," said Villele, "but he is rather a dark horse." "A dark horse?" I said.
"He is a sort of convert to Meccanianism. He has written books in appreciation of Meccanian principles, Meccanian ideals, Meccanian institutions, and so forth. They are eagerly read by the Meccanians. They even use them in their colleges. I have read them, and they seem to me very clever indeed. I translated them for the benefit of my countrymen, and I am not exactly an admirer of things Meccanian."
I must have looked rather puzzled, for Mr. Johnson came to my rescue.
"Mr. Villele means," he said, "that these books have a double meaning. I have read one of them. Under cover of the most exuberant flattery he gives such an impression of the cold-blooded devilishness of the system, that some of us suspect his real purpose to be that of exposing the whole business."
"He knows more of Meccania than anyone who is not a high official," said Villele; "and if you want to pursue your investigations any further, and incidentally get your manuscript conveyed out of the country, I should advise you to seek an interview with him."
"Will that be possible," I asked, "without arousing suspicion?"
"Oh, quite easily," answered Villele. "He is above suspicion, if you are not," he added, smiling. "He holds a weekly salon for foreigners, and you can easily get permission to attend. After that I leave it to you, and him."
That evening we went on talking a long time. Mr. Villele related some remarkable things, but I was not sure whether he was merely making fun of the Meccanians.
"You have not seen much of the Meccanian women?" he remarked.
"No," I said; "I have had no opportunity."
"They are quite as wonderful as the men," he said. "You never heard, for instance, of the great Emancipation Act, Regulation 19 of the Marital Law?"
"No," I replied; "what is it?"
"No Meccanian woman is obliged to submit to the embraces of her lawful husband."
"But how did the men ever consent to such a law?" I asked; "for in this country it is the men who make the laws."
"It is rather a queer story," he replied. "It is quite a long time ago, forty years or more, since a movement arose among the women, influenced no doubt by the women's movement in Europe, which had for its object, or one of its objects, greater freedom from the domestic tyranny of the Meccanian husband. Some of them, of course, thought that the way to secure everything they wanted was to get the right to vote for the National Council; but the wiser among them saw that the vote was merely a bad joke. Anybody could have the vote, because it was worth nothing; seeing that the powers of the representatives were being reduced to nothing. All the same, this women's movement, such as it was, was the nearest approach to a revolutionary movement that the Meccanians have ever shown themselves capable of. Once more our dear old Prince Mechow came to the rescue. He was a real genius."
"But I thought you did not admire the Mechow reforms?" I interrupted.
"I do not; but I recognise a genius when I see him. Believe me, Prince Mechow was the first Meccanian to understand his countrymen. He knew exactly what they wanted, what they would stand, what they could do, what they could be made to believe. He was absorbed in his early reforms when this women's movement broke out, and some people were afraid of it. He attacked the problem in his characteristic fashion. He knew the women didn't want political power; he knew also that there was not the slightest danger of them getting it; but he saw immense possibilities in having the women as his allies in certain of his reforms, especially his Eugenic reforms. He hit upon a really brilliant idea. I don't suppose you can guess what it was?"
"How can I?" I said. "All this is quite new to me."
"Well, if you had read Meccanian literature, or even the writings of the old travellers in Meccania âÄî your predecessors as Foreign Observers--you would know that the Meccanian women are the most primitive in Europe. They have one ideal as regards men. They have a superstitious admiration for physical strength. If a Meccanian woman were really free to choose her mate, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred she would choose the strongest man. They have always been like that. Probably many primitive peoples have had that characteristic, but the Meccanians have preserved that trait longest. You think I am joking or spinning a theory?"
"I was thinking that as they have had the same marriage laws as the rest of Europe for many centuries, the fact, if it is a fact, cannot be of much practical importance," I said.
"The fact itself is vouched for by dozens of writers among the Meccanians. They pride themselves on having preserved these primitive characteristics; they glory in never having been influenced by Latin culture. The marriage laws you speak of have been adopted by the men, in self-defence, so to speak. In very early times the Meccanian marriage laws were essentially the same as they have been for two thousand years, and the penalties on the women for infractions of the marriage laws were more severe in practice than in any other country. Notice the facts: breaches of the' moral code' before marriage are regarded very lightly: illegitimacy in Meccania, as is proved by statistics, was more prevalent than in most countries; but the men took care that breaches after marriage should be severely dealt with. I told you it was a long story, and I have not yet come to the point. For twenty or thirty
years before Prince Mechow got into the saddle all the young hot-headed Meccanian patriots got Eugenics on the brain, but none of them knew how to put their ideas into practice. Mechow himself was a Eugenist of the most brutal type. He believed that if he could once utilise this primitive instinct of the Meccanian women, he could do something much more effective than eliminating certain feeble types, which was all that the Eugenist theorists had so far aimed at. He proposed to give every woman the right to choose, within limits, the father of her children. He knew that all the Meccanian women were obsessed with a frantic admiration for the Military Class--in the old days it was the ambition of every woman to marry an officer, and that was why the officers who were not well-to-do never had any difficulty in getting a rich partie. Well, he actually made a law to the effect that any woman could claim a sort of exemption from the marital rights of her husband, upon the recommendation of an authorised medical man."
"But why on earth did the men consent to such a law?" I asked once more.
"That was easily done. You had only to invoke the Meccanian spirit, devotion to the supreme interests of the State, the opinion of the experts and all the rest of it. The opposition was stifled. The three highest classes were all for it; the women supported it, and although they had no political power they made opposition impossible."
"And what effect has this law had? I am afraid I do not see how it would effect the purpose Prince Mechow had in view," I said.
"The consequences have been enormous. I do not mean that the law by itself effected much, but taken as part of a system it solved the whole problem from Mechow's point of view."
"But how?" I asked, somewhat puzzled.
"You understand, I suppose, the system of medical inspection and medical supervision and medical treatment?"
"To a certain extent," I replied.
"Well, you realise perhaps that, in the hands of a patriotic medical staff, the system can be so worked that every woman who is' approved' can be provided with a' eugenic' mate from an approved panel, drawn chiefly from the Military Class, eh?"
"Is this one of Mr. Villele's jokes at the expense of the Meccanians?" I asked Mr. Johnson.
"He is telling the story in his own way," answered Johnson, "but in substance it is quite true."
"But it sounds incredible," I said. "What do the husbands say to it?"
"Oh, the business is done very quietly. A woman is ordered a' cure' by the' medical authority,' and she goes away for a little time. The men on the panel are kept in training, like pugilists used to be. As for the husbands--did you ever attend any lectures in the Universities on Meccanian ethics? Of course you have not been in the country very long. Jealousy is regarded as an obsolete virtue, or vice, whichever you like. Besides, you must not imagine the custom affects large numbers. Probably not more than 10 per cent of the women, chiefly in the Fifth and Sixth, and to some extent in the Fourth, Class, are affected."
"But I should have thought that social caste would be an insuperable obstacle," I said.
"Surely not! When did you hear that women were chosen for such purposes from any particular class? It is not a question of marriage."
"There is one circumstance," interposed Mr. Johnson, "that has some bearing on this subject.
Domestic life in Meccania for generations past has been based on quite a different ideal from that prevalent in other parts of Europe. A Meccanian in the old days used to choose a wife very much as he would choose a horse. She was thought of as the mother of children; in fact, the Meccanian sociologists used to maintain that this was one of the marks of their superiority over other European nations. Conjugal affection was recognised only as a sort of by-product of marriage. Of course they always pretended to cultivate a kind of Romanticism because they wrote a lot of verse about the spring, and moonlight and kisses and lovelonging, but their Romanticism never went beyond that. As the object of Meccanian sentiment, one person would do just as well as another."
"Our friend seems very much surprised at many things he finds in Meccania," remarked Mr. Villele, "and my own countrymen, and more especially my own countrywomen, only half believe the accounts they read about this country, simply because they think human nature is the same everywhere; but then they are ignorant of history. Civilisations just as extraordinary have existed in ancient times, created through the influence of a few dominant ideas. The Meccanians are a primitive people with a mechanical culture. They have never been civilised, because they have no conception of an individual soul. Consequently they find it easy to devote themselves to a common purpose."
The conversation went on for a long time. It was a warm summer evening and we were sitting in the garden at the back of the hotel, otherwise we should have been rather more guarded in our remarks. As we parted, Mr. Villele repeated his advice to seek an interview with Mr. Kwang, as he called him. (His name was Sz-ma-Kwang, but for convenience I shall allude to him as Mr. Kwang.) A day or two later, I contrived to get an interview with him, and although Conductor Lickrod was present I soon discovered that Mr. Kwang and I were members of the same secret society. He promised that I should see him again before long, and that he would be happy to assist me in any way he could. He told Lickrod that he had been doing his best, for the last five years, to induce the Chinese Government to send more' observers' to Meccania; but his enthusiasm for Meccania had perhaps defeated its own object, as it caused him to be mistrusted. His writings on Meccania were well known, and it was thought that he was trying to proselytise. He spoke most flatteringly of me to Lickrod, and said that, in view of the influence I should have in my own country, it was well worth while giving me every facility to see all I wished. He would guarantee that, under his tutelage, I should soon learn to appreciate things from the right point of view.
Two days after this, I received a message to call on the Chief Inspector of Foreigners. He received me most politely, and almost apologised for not having had time to see me before. He had only just learnt that I was a friend of the excellent Mr. Kwang. He said I should be permitted to visit Mr. Kwang whenever I chose, and that I was now at liberty to make use of the letters of introduction I had brought with me to several persons in Meccania. It would not be necessary for me to be accompanied by a' conductor' every day. He would transfer me to Class B, Stage II. Class B meant Foreign Observers staying not less than six months; and Stage II. meant that they were permitted to submit a plan each week showing how they proposed to spend the following week; so that on the days which were occupied to the satisfaction of the Inspector of Foreign Observers for the district, the services of a 'conductor' could be dispensed with.
I did not know whether to avail myself of my new-found liberty or not. For when I came to talk the matter over with the only person at hand, Conductor Lickrod, I found that it was not very easy to prepare a plan that would be accepted by the Authorities, unless I were prepared to pursue some definite line of research. When I talked of taking a few walks in the poorer quarters, calling in for a few lectures in the University, hearing some concerts, and seeing some plays and other amusements, looking round the museums,--a programme innocent enough in all conscience,--Lickrod said no Inspector would sanction such a miscellaneous time-table for an observer in Stage II. I was not qualified to attend concerts; I had not yet received permission to visit the theatre. Unless I were pursuing some particular study, I could only visit the museums in company with a conductor. As for a stroll through the poorer quarters, he failed to see the object of that. On the whole, I decided to stick to Lickrod for another week at any rate. I asked if I might see something of Education in Mecco. He said certainly, if I desired to make a study of Meccanian Pedagogics for a period of not less than four months. Otherwise it would not be possible to enter any of the educational institutions. I could get permission to read in the Great Library, if I would specify the subject, or subjects, and show that I was qualified to pursue them. In that way I could read up Meccanian Education. If I were not willing to do this, he advised me to talk to Mr. John
son, who was a keen and capable student of Meccanian Pedagogics.
I suggested investigating Meccanian political institutions, but similar difficulties arose there. I could only study Meccanian politics if I were registered as a specialist, and for that I should have to obtain permission from the Department for Foreign Affairs as well as from the Chief Inspector of Foreign Observers. He remarked, however, that in his opinion there was little to study beyond what could be got from books. The political system of Meccania was really simplicity itself when once the fundamental principles had been grasped. I replied that in most countries it took a foreigner rather a long time to understand the views and policy of the many different groups and sections in the representative assemblies. Each of them usually had their organisations and their special point of view. He replied that in Meccania the State itself was the only political organisation.
