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Page 57
Sometimes I felt an impulse to shout from the house-tops like a Hebrew
prophet and denounce this most wicked of generations. But the very
futility of the idea filled me with mortification.
Our enlightened twentieth century has no use for prophets. Christ
Himself would have been arrested as a pacifist or a lunatic if He had
spoken His mind in the streets of London. And the clergy would have
applauded the imprisonment of a dangerous "pro-German." The scribes and
Pharisees were more numerous and more powerful than ever before.
Particularly the scribes.
There never was in all the world an infamy as great as the infamy of our
war-time Press. A horde of unscrupulous liars and hirelings spat hatred
and malice from safe and comfortable positions. They played the hero
when no danger threatened. They defied an enemy who could not reach
them. They boasted of the deeds they had not done. They gloried in the
victories they did not win. They mouthed frantic protestations of
injured innocence when they should have felt the burden of guilty shame.
They were mawkishly sentimental when they should have felt keen grief
and horror. They denounced murder and they urged others to commit
murder. They spewed their venomous slime into every spring of healing
water. At a time when clear thinking and balanced judgments were needed
more desperately than ever before, they squirted into the air thick
clouds of lies, and half-truths, and misleading phrases, and judgments
distorted by hatred and warped by malice. And as for those who were
either lured on to perpetrate the great iniquity by grandiose and
seductive falsehoods or were dragged from their homes and families and
sent unwilling to the slaughter, these miserable slaves the Press of all
countries urged on, one against the other, brutally deaf to their
misery, representing them as glad and cheerful when they had reached the
extreme of human suffering, magnifying them into heroes of epic
proportions (before they donned their dingy garb of war they were "lice"
that had to be "combed out"), endowing them with absurdly impossible
virtues--when they were just ordinary human beings in misfortune with no
ambition except to live in peace and comfort--and at the same time
bestowing lofty patronage upon them and calling them "Tommies" and
sending them cigarettes, chocolates and advice, as though they were
children to be petted, with no will or intelligence of their own.
The Press, the cinema, the atrocity placards, and propagandist leaflets,
they all practised the same deliberate and colossal deceit and kindled
hatred against the enemy. And so successful was this diabolical
conspiracy that hatred became second nature to vast masses of people. To
think evil of the enemy was an article of national faith, and to
question this faith, or still more to repudiate it, that was heresy of
the most heinous kind. Religion died long ago, but the cult of
nationalism that replaced it was infinitely more pernicious in its
intolerance and cruelty than religion at its very worst.
Individually men are often good, but collectively men are always bad.
The national mob had never been so powerful, nor had it ever been so
servile, and that was why its passions were those of the coward and not
of the brave man; that was why chivalry and generosity and
fair-mindedness were execrated, and only hatred and boastfulness and
vindictive malice were allowed to live.
The rapidity with which the time passed was terrifying. Although my
leave had produced so much disillusionment, I yet dreaded its
termination. Just as my life at the front had made me unfit for life at
home, so my short spell of life at home had rendered me unfit for
further life at the front. Moreover, I knew that my concrete experiences
had done a little towards strengthening and confirming the attitude of
my few friends, a consideration that gave me some satisfaction. I
thought that in time I might get into touch with other people who shared
our attitude and then take part in some anti-war movement and fight
against the war instead of in it. That would have been the only activity
to which I could have devoted myself with energy and enthusiasm. But I
would soon have to go back and be muzzled once more by a ruthless
discipline and an all-embracing censorship. Moreover, as my leave
approached its end I began to regret that I had not striven harder to
enjoy the comforts and freedom of civilian life. The dread of the coming
return to slavery and dreary routine began to outweigh every other
consideration. The prospect of living in a tent crowded with
foul-mouthed, noisy soldiers filled me with dismay. I made a feeble
attempt at securing an extension of my leave, but failed, and then I
resigned myself to my fate.
One afternoon, towards the end of the fortnight, I went to Kew Gardens
with my friend.
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