Outspoken Essays | Page 8

the Roman Empire.
We may have a faint hope that some of these fallacies will be
abandoned by the workmen when their destructive results can no longer
be concealed. But sentimentalism seems to be incurable. It erects
irrationality into an act of religious faith, gives free rein to the emotion
of pity, and thinks that it is imitating the Good Samaritan by robbing
the Priest and Levite for the benefit of the man by the road-side. The
sentimentalist shows a bitter hatred against those who wish to cure an
evil by removing its causes. A good example is the language of writers
like Mr. Chesterton about eugenics and population. If social maladies
were treated scientifically, the trade of the emotional rhetorician would
be gone.
We have seen that democracy--the rule of majorities--has been
discredited and abandoned in action, though officially we all bow down
before it. Another popular delusion is that the chief change in the last
fifty years has been a conversion of the world from individualism to
socialism. In the language of the Christian socialists, who wish to
combine the militant spirit and organisation of medieval Catholicism
with a bid for the popular vote, we have 'rediscovered the Corporate
Idea.' But if we take socialism, not in the narrower sense of
collectivism, which would be an economic experiment, but in the wider
sense of a keen consciousness of the solidarity of the community as an

organic whole, there is very little truth in the commonly held notion
that we have become more socialistic. It is easy to see how the idea has
arisen. It became necessary to find some theoretical justification for
raising taxes, no longer for national needs, but for the benefit of the
class which imposed them; and this justification was found in the
theory that all wealth belongs to 'the State,' and may be justly divided
up as 'the State'--that is to say, the majority of the voters--may
determine. Whenever the question arises of voting new doles to the
dominant section of the people at the expense of the minority, our new
political philosophers profess themselves fervent socialists. But true
socialism, which is almost synonymous with patriotism, is as
conspicuously absent in those who call themselves socialists as it is
strong in those who repudiate the title. This paradox can be easily
proved. The most socialistic enterprise in which a nation ever engages
is a great war. A nation at war is conscious of its corporate unity and its
common interests, as it is at no other time. The nation then calls upon
every citizen to surrender all his personal rights and to offer his life and
limbs in the service of the community. And what has been the record of
the 'socialists' in the struggle for national existence in which we have
been engaged? In the years preceding the war they ridiculed the idea
that the country was in danger of being attacked, and used all their
power to prevent us from preparing against attack. They steadily
opposed the teaching of patriotism in the schools. When the war began,
they prevented the Government from introducing compulsory service
until our French Allies, who were left to bear the brunt, were on the
point of collapse; they, in very many cases, refused to serve themselves,
thereby avowing that, as far as they were concerned, they were willing
to see their country conquered by a horde of cruel barbarians; and they
nearly handed over our armies to destruction by fomenting strikes at
the most critical periods of the war. This attitude cannot be accounted
for by any conscientious objection to violence, which is in fact their
favourite weapon, except against the enemies of their country. Their
socialism is, in truth, individualism run mad; it is the very antithesis to
the consciousness of organic unity in a nation, which is the spiritual
basis of socialism. In this sense, the nation as a whole has shown a fine
socialistic temper; but the disgraceful exception has been the socialist
party. The intense and perverted individualism of the so-called socialist

is shown in another way. Whatever liberties a State may permit to its
citizens, it is certain that no nation can be in a healthy condition unless
the government keeps in its own hands the keys of birth and of death.
The State has the right of the farmer to decide how many cows should
be allowed to graze upon ten acres of grass; the right of the forester to
decide how many square feet are required for each tree in a wood. It
has also the right and the duty of the gardener to pull up noxious weeds
in his flower-beds. But the socialist vehemently repudiates both these
rights. Being an ultra-individualist, he is in favour of laisser faire,
where laisser faire