Читать книгу Some Impressions of My Elders - St. John G. Ervine - Страница 9

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It is when we come to connect his visions and the beliefs he derives from them with the actual circumstances in which we find ourselves that we begin to be most dubious. "National ideals," he says in "The National Being," "are the possession of a few people only." That is an argument for aristocracy.

Yet we must spread them in wide commonalty over Ireland if we are to create a civilisation worthy of our hopes and our ages of struggle and sacrifice to attain the power to build. We must spread them in wide commonalty because it is certain that democracy will prevail in Ireland. The aristocratic classes with traditions of government, the manufacturing classes with economic experience, will alike be secondary in Ireland to the small farmers and the wage-earners in the towns. We must rely on the ideas common among our people, and on their power to discern among their countrymen the aristocracy of character and intellect.

With the deletion of the word "Ireland" and the substitution of the word "America," that quotation might stand just as effective for the United States as for Ireland. Why is it certain that democracy will prevail in Ireland? Because the small farmers and the wage-earners in the towns will take precedence over the aristocracy and the manufacturing classes! I do not follow that argument. I have seen nothing in England or America or Ireland or France to convince me that if the small farmers and the wage-earners in the towns were authoritative they would be any more democratic than the aristocratic or the manufacturing classes. I have seen much to make me feel certain that they will use their authority as implacably in their own interests as any aristocrat or manufacturer ever used or ever will use his. Mr. G. K. Chesterton, in his book, "Irish Impressions," produces this argument in favour of peasant proprietorship:

It may be that international Israel will launch against us out of the East an insane simplification of the unity of Man, as Islam once launched out of the East an insane simplification of the unity of God. If it be so, it is where property is well distributed that it will be well defended. The post of honor will be with those who fight in very truth for their own land.

It is indisputable that a peasant will fight for his own land, the tiny portion which he owns and cultivates, but will he fight for another man's land when that man is unjustly to be bereft of it? There is nothing meritable in a man who fights for his own goods and lands, nor does it seem to me that a peasant will fight for his potato-patch with any greater determination than a share holder in a railroad will fight for the interest on his capital. There certainly is not anything more noble or chivalrous in the peasant's desire to keep possession of his means of livelihood than there is in that of the Liberty Bondholder. The test of honour is, not what will you do for yourself, but what will you do for other men? The French peasant proprietors, the Pennsylvania Dutch, the Irish peasant proprietors may offer a guarantee of stability to society, but the offer may carry with it obstinate reaction and a gross disregard of the rights of those who are not possessors of land. It will not guarantee the landless man against exploitation in the price of food in times of war and necessity. It offers singularly little hope that "national ideals" will be spread in wide commonalty, if the peasants can help it. "A. E." will urge, perhaps, that while "national ideals are the possession of a few people only," they may be spread in wide commonalty if the "few people" will make the effort to spread them. The soil lies ready for the seed. But what is there in human affairs to justify any man in assuming that the mass of men are likely to be long-suffering in idealism? Is it not a fact of human nature that even when the multitude has been stirred to some act of exaltation, the staying power of the multitude has not been sufficient to maintain the exalted mood long enough to render the reactionaries hopeless? Where are the generous ideals of 1914 now? Has not the war that was to end war made war seem more probable? Is not the world at this moment suffering to the point of distraction because the multitude cannot live up to its own ideals long enough to make them practical? "The gods departed," says "A. E.", "the half-gods also, hero and saint after that, and we [i. e. the Irish people] have dwindled down to a petty peasant nationality, rural and urban life alike mean in their externals." But he does not despair. "Yet the cavalcade, for all its tattered habiliments, has not lost spiritual dignity." And he hopes "the incorruptible atom" in us will make us great again. Divine optimism, but what is there in peasant society to justify it?