On Prussian Paganism

sian Guard was neither worse nor better than an officer in the Horse Guards or the Grenadier Guards, I pointed out at the time that the plain facts were against him. That a British officer might conceivably be more o£ a fool than the Prussian officer; that he might be a stupider or a wickeder man; that he might even in his secret heart be a prouder man — all that is quite arguable. But that British officers do not draw their swords on waiters or spurn ladies into the gutter with their spurs is not arguable; it is certain. There is, as a hard, historical fact, a different culture and code of manners in the two countries, whatever may be the spiritual and interior truth about any individual in either.

And this distinction, as I also pointed out previously, is rather specially true in this matter of the choice or recognition of a religion. I think it not unlikely that there are venerable English warriors, respected in the club and in the camp, whose views on theology, if any, would not be expressed with the subtle wit of Pascal or the compact logic of St. Thomas Aquinas. I take it that there are many such dear old boys whose use of theological language is mostly of an exclamatory and emotional description, and is often directed rather to moving Acheron than to bending the gods. Or, again, I have no doubt a good many of them would be even avowedly sceptical and hostile to the creed of their fathers, and would say the same sort of thing that poor Ludendorff said; only that they would express it still more vaguely by saying: "Got no use for religion, myself"; or "Never let the parsons kid me." But if anyone says that these keen sceptics or profound rationalists are just the same as General Ludendorff, that their rejection of Christianity is exactly like his rejection of Christianity, then I say that it is nothing of the sort. There is a separate type and tradition, and it is easily tested.

If you tell me that Earl Haig or Sir Henry Wilson went round England with a brass band, just after the War, advising everybody to worship Odin and Freya and Thor, because a religion of peace was inappropriate to the English character, I say they did not. If you say that the most violent materialist or the most scoffing sceptic among the dear old Majors who have quarrelled with their parsons were afterwards found erecting rude wooden altars, wreathed with oak and mistletoe, at which a true Nordic people might worship the heathen gods of their Norse piratical ancestors, I answer that

& r they were not. Yet Ludendorff himself, a Marshal who had swayed the huge marching armies of a mighty empire and held the lives of millions of men in his hands, did actually end by doing this very thing. It is easy to call him erratic, but he cannot have been a fool;

and even a fool, if he were an ordinary English military fool, would never have turned to lunacy like that. The point to seize is that even the real resemblances that have at certain times existed between the English and the Germans, the influence of some past alliances, of some parallel religious experiences, of some old ramifications of royal families, of some very modern hypotheses about race, of some consolidation as well as competition in commerce, of some similarity of ambition in colonization — the point is that even these are resemblances relatively superficial, covering differences that are very much more subtle.

There is something positive in the Paganism of Ger-many which is merely negative in the Paganism of England. The red-faced old Major in the English club has a sort of frivolity even in his fury. He does not often manage to say what he means, and therefore does not really mean what he says. But General Ludendorff, when he asks a mild Saxon professor in spectacles to go down suddenly on his knees and worship Thor, does really and truly mean what he says. When Herr Hitler says other things on other subjects, which sound to us quite as extraordinary, he does really mean what he says. Like every other real difference, the difference can be turned round and regarded from either point of view; can be described in terms that belittle or terms that exalt. We can call that temper the presence o£ sincerity; we can call it only the presence of solemnity; we can call it simply the absence of sanity. But it is unquestionably the absence of a certain sort of levity; a sort of grumbling laughter that rumbles in the inside of the old Major at the club and of most other English-men also; and does mean, in the majority of cases, that his bark is worse than his bite. It is represented, as I have already remarked, by the somewhat familiar fact that he uses the most lurid diction of demonology for entirely trivial occasions. The Major in the club is not a diabolist or a devil-worshipper because he begins half-a-dozen sentences with: "What the devil."

But the Hitlerite is much more like a devil-worshipper, because he does really worship the German God.

Newman, I think, remarked very truly that good generally fails by falling short of itself and evil by overleaping itself. Whether or no it be a fair application, it is certainly true that the Prussian soldier may take the Swastika on his flag only too seriously; while the English soldier may take the Cross on his flag not seriously enough. The blunders or wrongs that result from both faults may often seem very much the same, and yet the faults are fundamentally opposite. Even the revolt against religion is the revolt of two different religions, or perhaps of two different irreligions. And yet, in spite of all this, there is one thing in which both revolts are the same, and even both rebels very similar, having been born in the same epoch out of some of the same experiences. And that is in the bottomless muddle-headedness of what they actually say.

I need not go back at this stage to what the distinguished Prussian Pagan did actually say. It is more precise and priggish in tone than the vaguer version o£ the same thing which would be given by our own heathen in our own happy land. But what in the world does it mean? "I repudiate Christianity as not appropriate to the German character." You are, by hypothesis, discussing whether a certain theory about the whole nature of things is true. You are discussing whether the world did begin in a certain way; go wrong in a certain way; find help to go right again in a certain way; and whether it will end in a certain way, whether we like it or not. And the answer is not that the theory is false, but that it has not been specially composed to suit the taste or temperament of people living in a particular marsh, or halfway up a particular mountain, or along the shores of a particular inland lake; or in any local atmosphere which may or may not improve the faculties for finding the truth. It does not matter whether the statement is a statement of fact; it only matters whether it will instantly fit into the mood now filling the mind of the people in Tibet or Tooting or Ballyhooley or Berlin. Men give that sort of reason, if you can call it a reason, for rejecting Christianity; and then they go off and complain that Christianity is so anthropocentric!

XXXV On the Great Relapse

As I have here suggested, at frequent intervals and in various ways, I profoundly distrust and disbelieve in the whole of that movement which may be roughly called the Reaction after and against the Great War. As a sane man, not to tnake any claim to being a decent Christian, I naturally desire peace rather than war; and I am enough of an English patriot to have faced the fact, in many ways a rather unpleasant fact, that war just now might be even worse for England than for Europe. But I profoundly distrust and disbelieve in all those shades of negative revulsion, ranging from Pacifism to Pro-Germanism, which have actually passed liked waves over the Press and the political sentiment of the country during the post-war period. I think England was a great deal nearer to establishing peace on the day she declared war than she is now, when any number of other nations are likely to declare war in spite of her. I think she was nearer to re-establishing a real unity of Europe when she was fighting with the Prussians than when she was merely quarrelling with the French. I believe that a real council of the Allies, if