The Barbarism of Berlin | Page 5

of methods, but of aims.
We say that these veneered vandals have the perfectly serious aim of

destroying certain ideas, which, as they think, the world has outgrown;
without which, as we think, the world will die.
It is essential that this perilous peculiarity in the Pruss, or Positive
Barbarian, should be seized. He has what he fancies is a new idea; and
he is going to apply it to everybody. As a fact it is simply a false
generalisation; but he is really trying to make it general. This does not
apply to the Negative Barbarian: it does not apply to the Russian or the
Servian, even if they are barbarians. If a Russian peasant does beat his
wife, he does it because his fathers did it before him: he is likely to beat
less rather than more, as the past fades away. He does not think, as the
Prussian would, that he has made a new discovery in physiology in
finding that a woman is weaker than a man. If a Servian does knife his
rival without a word, he does it because other Servians have done it. He
may regard it even as piety, but certainly not as progress. He does not
think, as the Prussian does, that he founds a new school of horology by
starting before the word "Go." He does not think he is in advance of the
world in militarism merely because he is behind it in morals. No; the
danger of the Pruss is that he is prepared to fight for old errors as if
they were new truths. He has somehow heard of certain shallow
simplifications, and imagines that we have never heard of them. And,
as I have said, his limited, but very sincere lunacy concentrates chiefly
in a desire to destroy two ideas, the twin root ideas of rational society.
The first is the idea of record and promise: the second is the idea of
reciprocity.
It is plain that the promise, or extension of responsibility through time,
is what chiefly distinguishes us, I will not say from savages, but from
brutes and reptiles. This was noted by the shrewdness of the Old
Testament, when it summed up the dark irresponsible enormity of
Leviathan in the words, "Will he make a pact with thee?" The promise,
like the wheel, is unknown in Nature: and is the first mark of man.
Referring only to human civilisation, it may be said with seriousness
that in the beginning was the Word. The vow is to the man what the
song is to the bird, or the bark to the dog; his voice, whereby he is
known. Just as a man who cannot keep an appointment is not fit even to
fight a duel, so the man who cannot keep an appointment with himself
is not sane enough even for suicide. It is not easy to mention anything
on which the enormous apparatus of human life can be said to depend.

But if it depends on anything, it is on this frail cord, flung from the
forgotten hills of yesterday to the invisible mountains of to-morrow. On
that solitary string hangs everything from Armageddon to an almanac,
from a successful revolution to a return ticket. On that solitary string
the Barbarian is hacking heavily, with a sabre which is fortunately
blunt.
Anyone can see this well enough, merely by reading the last
negotiations between London and Berlin. The Prussians had made a
new discovery in international politics: that it may often be convenient
to make a promise; and yet curiously inconvenient to keep it. They
were charmed, in their simple way, with this scientific discovery, and
desired to communicate it to the world. They therefore promised
England a promise, on condition that she broke a promise, and on the
implied condition that the new promise might be broken as easily as the
old one. To the profound astonishment of Prussia, this reasonable offer
was refused! I believe that the astonishment of Prussia was quite
sincere. That is what I mean when I say that the Barbarian is trying to
cut away that cord of honesty and clear record on which hangs all that
men have made.
The friends of the German cause have complained that Asiatics and
Africans upon the very verge of savagery have been brought against
them from India and Algiers. And in ordinary circumstances, I should
sympathise with such a complaint made by a European people. But the
circumstances are not ordinary. Here, again, the quiet unique barbarism
of Prussia goes deeper than what we call barbarities. About mere
barbarities, it is true, the Turco and the Sikh would have a very good
reply to the superior Teuton. The general and just reason for not using
non-European tribes against Europeans is that