Utopia of Usurers | Page 7

old
firm to build up the great fabric of commerce (which can be done
without a head), but when he has done work he goes to the cloak-room,
like the man at the club, and gets his head back again; that is the germ

of the holiday. It may be urged that the club man who leaves his hat
often goes away with another hat; and perhaps it may be the same with
the factory hand who has left his head. A hand that has lost its head
may affect the fastidious as a mixed metaphor; but, God pardon us all,
what an unmixed truth! We could almost prove the whole ease from the
habit of calling human beings merely "hands" while they are working;
as if the hand were horribly cut off, like the hand that has offended; as
if, while the sinner entered heaven maimed, his unhappy hand still
laboured laying up riches for the lords of hell. But to return to the man
whom we found waiting for his head in the cloak-room. It may be
urged, we say, that he might take the wrong head, like the wrong hat;
but here the similarity ceases. For it has been observed by benevolent
onlookers at life's drama that the hat taken away by mistake is
frequently better than the real hat; whereas the head taken away after
the hours of toil is certainly worse: stained with the cobwebs and dust
of this dustbin of all the centuries.
The Supreme Adventure
All the words dedicated to places of eating and drinking are pure and
poetic words. Even the word "hotel" is the word hospital. And St.
Julien, whose claret I drank this Christmas, was the patron saint of
innkeepers, because (as far as I can make out) he was hospitable to
lepers. Now I do not say that the ordinary hotel-keeper in Piccadilly or
the Avenue de l'Opera would embrace a leper, slap him on the back,
and ask him to order what he liked; but I do say that hospitality is his
trade virtue. And I do also say it is well to keep before our eyes the
supreme adventure of a virtue. If you are brave, think of the man who
was braver than you. If you are kind, think of the man who was kinder
than you.
That is what was meant by having a patron saint. That is the link
between the poor saint who received bodily lepers and the great hotel
proprietor who (as a rule) receives spiritual lepers. But a word yet
weaker than "hotel" illustrates the same point--the word "restaurant."
There again you have the admission that there is a definite building or
statue to "restore"; that ineffaceable image of man that some call the

image of God. And that is the holiday; it is the restaurant or restoring
thing that, by a blast of magic, turns a man into himself.
This complete and reconstructed man is the nightmare of the modern
capitalist. His whole scheme would crack across like a mirror of Shallot,
if once a plain man were ready for his two plain duties--ready to live
and ready to die. And that horror of holidays which marks the modern
capitalist is very largely a horror of the vision of a whole human being:
something that is not a "hand" or a "head for figutes." But an awful
creature who has met himself in the wilderness. The employers will
give time to eat, time to sleep; they are in terror of a time to think.
To anyone who knows any history it is wholly needless to say that
holidays have been destroyed. As Mr. Belloc, who knows much more
history than you or I, recently pointed out in the "Pall Mall Magazine,"
Shakespeare's title of "Twelfth Night: or What You Will" simply meant
that a winter carnival for everybody went on wildly till the twelfth
night after Christmas. Those of my readers who work for modern
offices or factories might ask their employers for twelve days' holidays
after Christmas. And they might let me know the reply.

V. THE CHURCH OF THE SERVILE STATE
I confess I cannot see why mere blasphemy by itself should be an
excuse for tyranny and treason; or how the mere isolated fact of a man
not believing in God should be a reason for my believing in Him.
But the rather spinsterish flutter among some of the old Freethinkers
has put one tiny ripple of truth in it; and that affects the idea which I
wish to emphasise even to monotony in these pages. I mean the idea
that the new community which the capitalists are now constructing will
be a very complete and absolute community; and one which will
tolerate nothing really independent of itself.