The Crimes of England | Page 2

that, as the passengers on the ship had been warned in an
advertisement, Germany was justified in blowing them to the moon; (iv)
that there were guns, and the ship had to be torpedoed because the
English captain was just going to fire them off; (v) that the English or
American authorities, by throwing the Lusitania at the heads of the
German commanders, subjected them to an insupportable temptation;

which was apparently somehow demonstrated or intensified by the fact
that the ship came up to schedule time, there being some mysterious
principle by which having tea at tea-time justifies poisoning the tea; (vi)
that the ship was not sunk by the Germans at all but by the English, the
English captain having deliberately tried to drown himself and some
thousand of his own countrymen in order to cause an exchange of stiff
notes between Mr. Wilson and the Kaiser. If this interesting story be
true, I can only say that such frantic and suicidal devotion to the most
remote interests of his country almost earns the captain pardon for the
crime. But do you not see, my dear Professor, that the very richness and
variety of your inventive genius throws a doubt upon each explanation
when considered in itself? We who read you in England reach a
condition of mind in which it no longer very much matters what
explanation you offer, or whether you offer any at all. We are prepared
to hear that you sank the Lusitania because the sea-born sons of
England would live more happily as deep-sea fishes, or that every
person on board was coming home to be hanged. You have explained
yourself so completely, in this clear way, to the Italians that they have
declared war on you, and if you go on explaining yourself so clearly to
the Americans they may quite possibly do the same.
Second, when telling such lies as may seem necessary to your
international standing, do not tell the lies to the people who know the
truth. Do not tell the Eskimos that snow is bright green; nor tell the
negroes in Africa that the sun never shines in that Dark Continent.
Rather tell the Eskimos that the sun never shines in Africa; and then,
turning to the tropical Africans, see if they will believe that snow is
green. Similarly, the course indicated for you is to slander the Russians
to the English and the English to the Russians; and there are hundreds
of good old reliable slanders which can still be used against both of
them. There are probably still Russians who believe that every English
gentleman puts a rope round his wife's neck and sells her in Smithfield.
There are certainly still Englishmen who believe that every Russian
gentleman takes a rope to his wife's back and whips her every day. But
these stories, picturesque and useful as they are, have a limit to their
use like everything else; and the limit consists in the fact that they are
not true, and that there necessarily exists a group of persons who know

they are not true. It is so with matters of fact about which you
asseverate so positively to us, as if they were matters of opinion.
Scarborough might be a fortress; but it is not. I happen to know it is not.
Mr. Morel may deserve to be universally admired in England; but he is
not universally admired in England. Tell the Russians that he is by all
means; but do not tell us. We have seen him; we have also seen
Scarborough. You should think of this before you speak.
Third, don't perpetually boast that you are cultured in language which
proves that you are not. You claim to thrust yourself upon everybody
on the ground that you are stuffed with wit and wisdom, and have
enough for the whole world. But people who have wit enough for the
whole world, have wit enough for a whole newspaper paragraph. And
you can seldom get through even a whole paragraph without being
monotonous, or irrelevant, or unintelligible, or self-contradictory, or
broken-minded generally. If you have something to teach us, teach it to
us now. If you propose to convert us after you have conquered us, why
not convert us before you have conquered us? As it is, we cannot
believe what you say about your superior education because of the way
in which you say it. If an Englishman says, "I don't make no mistakes
in English, not me," we can understand his remark; but we cannot
endorse it. To say, "Je parler le Frenche language, non demi," is
comprehensible, but not convincing. And when you say, as you did in a
recent appeal to the Americans, that the Germanic Powers have
sacrificed a great deal of