Christmas Holiday (29 page)

They parted and Charley walked to Simon’s. He knew that at that hour he stood a good chance of finding
him in. Simon opened the door on his ring. He was in pyjamas and a dressing-gown.

“Hulloa! I thought you might breeze along. I didn’t have to go out this morning, so I didn’t dress!”

He hadn’t shaved and he looked as though he hadn’t washed either. His long straight hair was in disorder. By the bleak light that came through the north window his restless, angry eyes looked coal-black in his white thin face and there were dark shadows beneath them.

“Sit down,” he continued. “I’ve got a good fire to-day and the studio’s warm.”

It was, but it was as forlorn, cheerless and unswept as before.

“Is the love affair still going strong?”

“I’ve just left Lydia.”

“You’re going back to London to-morrow, aren’t you? Don’t let her sting you too much. There’s no reason why you should help to get her rotten husband out of jug.”

Charley took the cuttings from his pocket.

“By your article I judged that you had a certain amount of sympathy for him.”

“Sympathy, no. I found him interesting just because he was such an unmitigated, cold-blooded, unscrupulous cad. I admired his nerve. In other circumstances he might have been a useful instrument. In a revolution a man like that who’ll stick at nothing, who has courage and no scruples, may be invaluable.”

“I shouldn’t have thought a very reliable instrument.”

“Wasn’t it Danton who said that in a revolution it’s
the scum of society, the rogues and criminals, who rise to the surface? It’s natural. They’re needed for certain work and when they’ve served their purpose they can be disposed of.”

“You seem to have it all cut and dried, old boy,” said Charley, with a cheerful grin.

Simon impatiently shrugged his bony shoulders.

“I’ve studied the French Revolution and the Commune. The Russians did too and they learnt a lot from them, but we’ve got the advantage now that we can profit by the lessons we’ve learnt from subsequent events. They made a bad mess of things in Hungary, but they made a pretty good job of it in Russia and they didn’t do so badly either in Italy or in Germany. If we’ve got any sense we ought to be able to emulate their success, but avoid their mistakes. Bela Kun’s revolution failed because people were hungry. The rise of the proletariat has made it comparatively simple to make a revolution, but the proletariat must be fed. Organization is needed to see that means of transport are adequate and food supplies abundant. That incidentally is why power, which the proletariat thought to seize by making the revolution, must always elude their grasp and fall into the hands of a small body of intelligent leaders. The people are incapable of governing themselves. The proletariat are slaves and slaves need masters.”

“You would hardly describe yourself any longer as a good democrat, I take it,” said Charley with a twinkle in his blue eyes.

Simon impatiently dismissed the ironical remark.

“Democracy is moonshine. It’s an unrealizable ideal which the propagandist dangles before the masses as you dangle a carrot before a donkey. Those great watchwords of the nineteenth century, liberty, equality, fraternity, are pure hokum. Liberty? The mass of men don’t need liberty and don’t know what to do with it when they’ve got it. Their duty and their pleasure is to serve; thus they attain the security which is their deepest want. It’s been decided long ago that the only liberty worth anything is the liberty to do right, and right is decided by might. Right is an idea occasioned by public opinion and prescribed by law, but public opinion is created by those who have the power to enforce their point of view, and the only sanction of law is the might behind it. Fraternity? What do you mean by fraternity?”

Charley considered the question for a moment.

“Well, I don’t know. I suppose it’s a feeling that we’re all members of one great family and we’re here on earth for so short a time, it’s better to make the best of one another.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, only that life is a difficult job, and it probably makes it easier for everybody if we’re kind and decent to one another. Men have plenty of faults, but there’s a lot of good in them. The more you know people the nicer you find they are. That rather suggests that if you give them a chance they’ll meet you half way.”

“Tosh, my dear boy, tosh. You’re a sentimental fool. In the first place it’s not true that people improve as you
know them better: they don’t. That’s why one should only have acquaintances and never make friends. An acquaintance shows you only the best of himself, he’s considerate and polite, he conceals his defects behind a mask of social convention; but grow so intimate with him that he throws the mask aside, get to know him so well that he doesn’t trouble any longer to pretend; then you’ll discover a being of such meanness, of such a trivial nature, of such weakness, of such corruption, that you’d be aghast if you didn’t realize that that was his nature and it was just as stupid to condemn him as to condemn the wolf because he ravens or the cobra because he strikes. For the essence of man is egoism. Egoism is at once his strength and his weakness. Oh, I’ve got to know men pretty well during the two years I’ve spent in the newspaper world. Vain, petty, unscrupulous, avaricious, double-faced and abject, they’ll betray one another, not even for their own advantage, but from sheer malice. There’s no trick they won’t descend to in order to queer a rival’s pitch; there’s no humiliation they won’t accept to obtain a title or an order; and not only politicians; lawyers, doctors, merchants, artists, men of letters. And their craving for publicity; they’ll cringe and flatter a twopenny-halfpenny journalist to get a good press. Rich men will hesitate at no shabby dodge to make a few pounds that they have no use for. Honesty, political honesty, commercial honesty—the only thing that counts with them is what they can get away with; the only thing that restrains them is fear. For they’re craven. And the protestations they make, the high-flown
humbug that falls from their lips, the shameless lies they tell themselves. Oh, believe me, you can’t do the work I’ve been doing since I left Cambridge and preserve many illusions about human nature. Men are vile. Cowards and hypocrites. I loathe them.”

Charley looked down. He was a little shy about saying what he wanted to. It sounded rather silly.

“Haven’t you any pity for them?”

“Pity? Pity is womanish. Pity is what the beggar entreats of you because he hasn’t the guts, the industry and the brains to make a decent living. Pity is the flattery the failure craves so that he may preserve his self-esteem. Pity is the cheap blackmail that the prosperous pay to the down-and-out so that they may enjoy their own prosperity with a better conscience.”

Simon drew his dressing-gown angrily round his thin body. Charley recognized it as an old one of his which he had been going to throw away when Simon asked if he could have it; he had laughed and said he would give him a new one, but Simon, saying it was quite good enough for him, had insisted on having it. Charley wondered uncomfortably if he resented the trifling gift. Simon went on:

“Equality? Equality is the greatest nonsense that’s ever muddled the intelligence of the human race. As if men were equal or could be equal! They talk of equality of opportunity. Why should men have that when they can’t take advantage of it? Men are born unequal; different in character, in vitality, in brain; and no equality of opportunity can offset that. The vast majority are densely stupid. Credulous, shallow, feckless,
why should they be given equality of opportunity with those who have character, intelligence, industry and force? And it’s that natural inequality of man that knocks the bottom out of democracy. What a stupid farce it is to govern a country by the counting of millions of empty heads! In the first place they don’t know what’s good for them and in the second, they haven’t the capacity to get the good they want. What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily, self-seeking politicians. A democracy is ruled by words, and the orator seldom has brains, and if he has, he hasn’t time to use them, since all his energy has to be given to cajoling the fools on whose votes he depends. Democracy has had a hundred years’ trial: theoretically it was always absurd, and now we know that practically it’s a wash-out.”

“Notwithstanding which you propose, if you can, to get into parliament. You’re a very dishonest fellow, my poor Simon.”

“In an old-fashioned country like England, which cherishes its established institutions, it would be impossible to gain sufficient power to carry out one’s plans except from within those institutions. I don’t suppose anyone could gain support in the country and gather round himself an adequate band of followers to effect a coup d’état unless he were a prominent member of one of the great parties in the House of Commons. And since an upheaval can only be effected by means of the people it would have to be the Labour party. Even when the conditions are ripe for revolution the possessing classes still retain enough of their privileges
to make it worth their while to make the best of a bad job.”

“What conditions have you in mind? Defeat in war and economic distress?”

“Exactly. Even then the possessing classes only suffer relatively. They put down their cars or close their country houses, thus adding to unemployment, but not greatly inconveniencing themselves. But the people starve. Then they will listen to you when you tell them they have nothing to lose but their chains, and when you dangle before them the bait of other people’s property the greed, the envy, which they’ve had to repress because they had no means of gratifying them, are let loose. With liberty and equality as your watchwords you can lead them to the attack. The history of the last five-and-twenty years shows that they’re bound to win. The possessing classes are enervated by their possessions, they’re humanitarian and sentimental, they have neither the will nor the courage to defend themselves; their counsels are divided, and when their only chance is in immediate and ruthless action they waste their time in recrimination. But the mob, which is the instrument of the revolutionary leaders, is a thing not of reason but of instinct, it is amenable to hypnotic suggestion and you can rouse it to frenzy by catchwords; it is an entity, and so is indifferent to the death in its ranks of such as fall; it knows neither pity nor mercy. It rejoices in destruction because in destruction it becomes conscious of its own power.

“I suppose you wouldn’t deny that that entails the killing of thousands of inoffensive people and the destruction
of institutions that have taken hundreds of years to build up.”

“There’s bound to be destruction in a revolution and there’s bound to be killing. Engels said years ago that the possessing classes must be expected to resist suppression by every means in their power. It’s a fight to the death. Democracy has attached an absurd importance to human life. Morally man is worthless and it’s no loss to suppress him. Biologically he’s of no consequence; there’s no more reason why it should shock you to kill a man than to swat a fly.”

“I begin to see why you were interested in Robert Berger.”

“I was interested in him because he killed, not for any sordid motive, not for money, nor jealousy, but to prove himself and affirm his power.”

“Of course it remains to be proved that communism is practicable.”

“Communism? Who talked of communism? Everyone knows now that communism is a wash-out. It was the dream of impractical idealists who knew nothing of the realities of life. Communism is the lure you offer to the working classes to rouse them to revolt just as the cry of liberty and equality is the slogan with which you fire them to dare. Throughout the history of the world there have always been exploiters and exploited. There always will be. And it’s right that it should be so because the great mass of men are made by nature to be slaves; they are unfit to control themselves, and for their own good need masters.”

“That’s rather a startling assertion.”

“It’s not mine, old boy,” Simon answered ironically. “It’s Plato’s, but the history of the world since he made it has amply demonstrated its truth. What has been the result of the revolutions we’ve seen in our own lifetime? The people haven’t lost their masters, they’ve only changed them, and nowhere has authority been wielded with a more iron hand than under communism.”

“Then the people are duped?”

“Of course. Why not? They’re fools, and they deserve to be. What does it matter? Their gain is substantial. They’re not asked to think for themselves any more; they’re told what to do, and so long as they’re obedient they have the security they’ve always hankered after. The dictators of our own day have made mistakes and we can learn by their errors. They’ve forgotten Machiavelli’s dictum that you can enslave the people politically if you leave their private lives free. I should give the people the illusion of liberty by allowing them as much personal freedom as is compatible with the safety of the state. I would socialize industry as widely as the idiosyncrasy of the human animal permits and so give men the illusion of equality. And since they would all be brothers under one yoke they would even have the illusion of fraternity. Remember that a dictator can do all sorts of things for the benefit of the people that democracy is prevented from doing because it has to consider vested interests, jealousies and personal ambitions, and so he has an unparalleled opportunity to alleviate the lot of the masses. I went to a great communist meeting the other
day and on banner after banner I read the words Peace, Work and Weil-Being. Could any claims be more natural? And yet here man is after a hundred years of democracy still making them. A dictator can satisfy them by a stroke of the pen.”

“But by your own admission the people only change their master; they’re still exploited; what makes you think that they’ll put up with it?”

“Because they’ll damned well have to. Under present conditions a dictator with planes to drop bombs and armoured cars to fire machine guns can quell any revolt. The possessing classes could do the same, and no revolution would succeed, but the event has shown that they haven’t the nerve; they kill a hundred men, a thousand even, but then they get scared, they want to compromise, they offer to make concessions, but it’s too late then for concession or compromise and they’re swept away. But the people will accept their master because they know that he is better and wiser than they are.”