Evening star., 1934-09-16
England of Present Day


one of the innumerable tabooS that
some future Malisnowsh will analyze.
Thus the English are both marvel
ously we'll ordered and incredibly
slack-a most attractive combination,
when you get used to 1t, and fair
sample of many others. For it is true
that out of host of absurd and ir-
reconcilable extremes there does ar
rive a sort of average reasonableneSs
that pervades England as perhaps no
other country in the world. For In
stance, are the English sentimental?
If you Judge by the cold farewell hand
shake of father and son at quaysideS,
and by the fact that the best of friends
never shake hands at all, you might
say mo-; but consider, as quite hap
hazard example, the case of the little
dog Caesar, who walked Immediately
behind his royal masters coffin at the
funeral of Edward VII. The ex-
Kaiser, who was also present, told
somebody afterward that "he had
often been asked to do curious things
in England, but never before in his life
had he been told to do such an odd
thing as to walk behind dog
Similarly with Englands opinion of
herself. Is this high or low? Ger
tainly the patriotic panegyric which
Frenchman can reel out on the slight
est provocation is not one to which an
average Englishman could supply a
parallel, and it is similarly true that
an English Smith who has composed
e. l44A IL,
Schmidt. All this would seem to show
that the spirit Of England is excep-
tionally modest. But don't be too sure.
English pride does exist, and it is really
terrific on the rare occasions on which
it asserts itself. It consists of the sin
gle, tremendous assumption that Eng
land Is right. For instance. I read re-
Gently of an English lady who objected
to the foreign fashion of young men
growing boards because it was effemi-
nate" Efeminate, forsooth! Clearly
she had argued: English youths are
not effeminate; they do not take to
boards; therefore boards are effemi-
nate. Such frantic syllogism is part
of that mad and mystic logic that took
firm root in England long before Elm
stein invented curved straight lines,
and which, with its total disregard of
the meaning of words, Is quite capable
Of demoliShing an entire MARKHAM edi-
flee by sublimely confident absurdity.
Indeed, it has no kinship at all with
Karl, but good deal with Carroll.
Does this, in parentheses, mean that
there will never be communism in
England? Not at all. Quite possibly it
will be introduced by the Conserva-
tives, under cloak of national emer-
gency, with collective farms run by
the big dairy combines. The renters
of Bournemouth and Cheltenham will
vote for it en- masse, but the working
class constituencies will be more criti-
cal. Probably, also, it will work. It
will be plus little something other
communismS haven't got. It will have
that supreme and vitalizing inconse-
quence which will mate. the lifeless
thesis OF Red brotherhood with the
fairy humors Of Red Ridinghood and
produce therefrom an offspring rich
and strange and thoroughly English.
Th1s, however, is a depression. We
were considering the absurd extremes
which England, by cherishing them,
converts into a splendid bulk of rea-
sonableness. How is it, for instance,
that though England considers it q
crime to buy or sell cigarettes after
o'clock at night, there are no close
times for the talking of sedition in
Hyde Park? And that the honest In
dian. who cannot be permitted to gov
pnn6ol ie
ceptable as the honorable member for
Battersea?
Reasons for Liking England.
These things are mysteries, but they
are also reasons for liking England,
because they provide a maximum Of
excitement and amusement with
minimum of unpleasantness.
But England, though receptive. Is
not really very absorbent. No London
buildings. for instance, are nearly as
trans s-Atlantically high as some in
Madrid or Dusseldorf, and if any one
were to suggest removing an ugly Vic
torian house in Park lane to make
way for the tallest skyscraper in the
world (where it would, in fact, look
AoOAlCI "Cl1tp WOulu pC oil
mediate cry Of vandalism. A similar
emotion, doubtless, preserves the ira
ditions of the English police force,
and insists that truncheon is a per-
fectly adequate weapon to deal with
armed bandits.
And here I come to really gigantic
reason for liking England. 1t is the
fact that her answers are right, even
If her sums are wrong. She has an
uncanny knack of drawing perfectly
correct conclusions. In this matter
of the police, for instance, she has a
nervous dread of firearms which ex-
presses itself in the idea that it is
"un-English" to shoot. This may be
nonsense, but it is certainly true that
there is less banditry in England than
in Germany or America, where the
fact that the police do shoot is a pow-
erful encouragement to wrongdoers to
shoot first. Thus the English policy
has been proved the right one. Is all
this accident or design? One may
perhaps suggest that it is a mixture
of both, a cocktail of satisfying po-
tency which has given rise to the
shrewd continental remark that the
English in any kind of war are apt to
lose evey battle-except the last.
England a Free Country.
England, moreover, is that outmoded
institution, free country-free, that
is, so far as freedom is possible in an
increasingly fettered and complicated
world. The very fact that assertions
to the contrary generally center upon
the hours at which an Englishman
can and cannot buy glass of beer
shows plainly enough that the cranks
and extremists have been bought off
cheaply in England compared with
the price that has had to be paid in
certain other countries.
One need not say very much about
England as democracy. 1t is the
fashion to decry democracy, and few
people will find it easy to like England
because she has House of Commons.
Then why not do SO because she has a
House of Lords? You have only to
look in the pages of the illustrated
papers to see that the unblushing snob-