Читать книгу The Anglo-Saxon Century and the Unification of the English-Speaking People - John R. Dos Passos - Страница 7

It has been boastingly said by her enemies, and reluctantly acknowledged by some of her friends, that England has entered upon her decline, and that a decay has set in which will destroy her power and prestige. There is nothing more absurd than this assertion. The same statements were circulated in reference to her at various periods of her past history—notably at the close of the Revolutionary War. Look into her history at that time; consult the contemporaneous writers, and we shall find them replete with gloomy and direful predictions. And yet how she gathered herself together; and in a few years how resplendent she was in military and civic glory! Her political edifice cannot be destroyed so long as reason holds its sway, because it is built upon the solid foundations of true civil liberty, which it is the aim of all people to establish and conserve. Show me anyone, not actuated by pure bigotry, who would deliberately and maliciously wish to demolish such a government!

When men band themselves together in a revolutionary purpose, it is to destroy tyranny and oppression. They do not begin revolutions with edicts against liberty and free government.

England will decline, if ever she declines, when men assail order and law, and seek to erect in their stead, as a basis of government, chaos and confusion. Her literature can never be destroyed; it will enlighten the world long after her government {6} ceases to be. It will be the basis of a new civilisation long, long after her people cease to act together. I will not weary the reader with statistics of her material growth. They show no real, permanent decline; but they do reveal that she has fierce commercial competitors in the United States and Germany. They show that she must arouse herself to a real struggle to support her people. But no matter how this war for commercial supremacy may end, we must remember that the real greatness of a nation, or people, does not wholly consist in mere material wealth. We of North America are overlooking this important fact in our sudden and marvellous development. We are to-day, and not without some truth, called a purely "dollar nation." Our people are struggling for money, as if that were the only desideratum of life. We forget that religion, in its broad sense, liberty, justice, equality, and virtue are more important than money; they are the chains of steel which bind a free people together; mere wealth without these qualities has no preserving power: and if we lose our institutions, in their form or in their spirit, of what use will money be to us, or how will it be protected? The acquisition of wealth is legitimate, but it must not be the sole aim of the people, else they will forget their duties as citizens; and should that time come, and chaos and revolution ensue, of what use will material advantages be, even if they should survive the loss of freedom?

Remember that a government based upon gold, {7} wealth, sordidness, must end unhappily. We must have other and higher ideals for our people.

Do not misunderstand me; I do not decry individual, and, in certain degrees, aggregate wealth. Let our citizens accumulate money "beyond the dreams of avarice." Through the natural channels open for its circulation, it will gradually flow back to the community. And overlook not the difference between real and fictitious values. Men often create paper values, which disappear like snow before the summer sun when the operations of true economic principles attack them. So long as individual or combined wealth adheres to its legitimate functions, a State is safe. When, however, it is used to corrupt or influence the judiciary; when it seeks to interfere with, or affect legislation; when it subsidises or controls the press; when it severs instead of combines society; in fine, when it is used as a substitute for character, the people must beware; they must quickly intervene and crush it; for the pillars of all free government will then be attacked, and they will experience an oligarchy of wealth—the worst of all oligarchies and the most destructive of individual liberty.

One word more on the subject of England's alleged material decline. In less than one year she transported in her own ships two hundred and fifty thousand soldiers to South Africa, without the loss of a single life.

No other two existing nations could have accomplished the same task; and, allowing for all drawbacks {8} and mishaps, when the history of that war comes to be written, it will be found that, under all the circumstances, it will not be the least of ancient or modern achievements. And yet with what characteristic absence of self-glorification it has been done!

In the last century, and under the glorious reign just closed, she has been perfecting more and more her constitutional system; the various classes composing her society have been thoroughly interfused; political power has been extended to the masses, education has been disseminated, benevolent enterprise has gone hand in hand with the acquisition of wealth to an unparalleled degree. These are to be set off against any possible decline in her trade. It is hard to see how even that decline can be permanent or anything more than accidental while she retains her other possessions, and along with them the virile qualities which called them into existence.

She commences the twentieth century with undiminished glory and the prospect of increasing influence.