On Helen's Babies

America produced the first — one is tempted to say the lastj but anyhow the best — of the modern works of light literature about the enfant terrible. It is almost a matter of religion that every infant is a terrible infant. Every child is, both in the most superficial and in the most solemn sense, a holy terror. But while all children are both amusing and alarming, while all children are therefore interesting, it can hardly be maintained that all books about children are interesting. But that original American work, which presumably set the fashion, was a thing genuine and convincing of its kind, and I fancy it has remained the best of its kind. Helen's babies really are babies, and (what is rare in fiction, as Stevenson noticed) they really are Helen's, though Helen never appears in the story. The temporary orphans do somehow suggest a mother who is not there. Anyhow, that very simple and sincere little sketch was interesting when it appeared, and it is interesting still, even if nobody is interested. If it has been forgotten, it has been forgotten for the sake of a swarm of plagiarists who have done the same thing much worse — who are, indeed, still doing it, and doing it worse and worse. A wholly alien idea of impudence has been brought in to poison the humours of innocence. Toddy and Budge were impossible, but not impudent. For impudence is not an element of the freshness of youth, but of the hardening of old age. The new people are not interested in the child, but in the spoilt child — that is, in the unchildish child. The whole point of the true tradition of the enjant terrible was that the child was unconscious and not self-conscious. The terrible infant is terrible like one of the forces of nature, like the blind sea or the random thunderbolt, laying waste the most elaborate social structures of man. There is in innocence a power of appalling indifference, of destructive detachment from all such elaborate social arrangements. It is like the old legendary theory of omens. It was essential that the oracular saying, the blessing or the curse, should be something arbitrary. It was best of all when it was something accidental. It must mean much more than it was meant to mean. It must be too great for the mouth that utters it 3 a man must mention a triviality, and other men realize that he has uttered a prophecy like the trump of doom. It was this random character in the thunderbolts thrown by that young god, the enfant terrible y that was the whole point of his legend. If he is only a little prig with several complexes and an ego, he is not the stuff of which myths are made. But the simplicity of the popular traditlon, the tradition of the random word of innocence as the rebuke to complexity, did linger in the little book of which I speak, the best book of its kind that I know. It is a curiosity of literature, or of ignorance of literature, that as far as I know nobody remembers the author — I, for one, do not even know his name.

But I mention that old American story with reference to certain criticisms of American conditions. It gave, if only indirectly and by inference, a good deal of information about the moral and religious atmosphere of that late nineteenth-century New England of which the religion was already changing, but the morals remained the same. But the particular point that interests me now in that connexion is the celebrated remark of Toddy, the smaller of the two boys, who could not be torn away from the contemplation of his uncle's watch — or rather, of the works of his watch — and who incessantly repeated that he wanted to see the wheels go round. That seems to me an excellent example of the unconscious oracle of prophecy, of the random revelation of great and serious things. Toddy did indeed make himself a teraph-head, a blind mask and automatic mouthpiece and the trumpet of the American spirit. That is the whole meaning of industrialism, individualism, progress, hustle, and hundred-per-cent efSciency. That is the meaning of Pittsburgh and

Chicago, of the sky-scrapers and the quick lunches. They want to see wheels go round, more and more wheels go round, larger and larger wheels go round, wheels that go round faster and faster. And this amuses them exactly as it amused Toddy, and for the same reason. It amuses them because they are as innocent as Helen's babies, even in a sense because they are as old-fashioned as Helen's babies. At bottom they have a simple conservatism — so simple that it does not even know it is conservative. It has hardly realized how much hustle is identical with routine. It does not know when its own argument is an argument in a circle as round as a cipher; and it talks about a hundred-per-cent efficiency without remembering that a hundred per cent of nought is nought. But Toddy is full of the fire of innocence, and has not wearied of seeing the wheels go round. He has not even discovered that it is the nature of a wheel going round to come back to the same place. The notion that America is advanced only shows how deceptive is the mask of machinery and materialistic science. As a historical fact, those who have been advanced in their machinery have generally not been advanced in their ideas. In so far as there is any sense in the word, they have not been advanced either in the good or the bad sense of the word. The makers of machinery have been loyal or conventional or docile or servile, as you choose to regard it. The people without machinery have been intellectual, independent, speculative, or sceptical, as you choose to regard it. In liberty and detachment of the intelligence the old slow pilgrims race far ahead of the new rapid tourists. The flying-ships of Count Zeppelin and the petrol-traffic of Mr. Rockefeller are panting hundreds of miles behind the slow camel of Job or the white elephant of Buddha. If it comes to thinking, to questioning, to the use or abuse of speculation, no people have done it more than people sitting on the bare ground and staring at the stars. No people have done it less than people engaged in the applications of physical science to practical commerce. No people have done it less than the American people. The great mass of the American people remain, both for good and evil, stolidly, stubbornly, astoundingly conservative in their ideas.

As already observed, progress in machinery generally did occur where there was no progress in mentality. It was the reactionary countries which developed industrialism — the Germany of Bllicher and Bismarck, the England of Wellington and Peel. It is one of the very few points in which England does resemble Germany, or some parts of Germany. That is why it was never mentioned by the Teutonists. It is also one of the very few points in which England does resemble America, or some parts of America. That is why it is never mentioned by the

Anglo-Saxons. The combination of Toryism in politics with restlessness in mechanics does really unite Berlin with Birmingham, and to some extent Birmingham with Bismarckville, Pa., U. S. A. People seem to forget that the very time when the English were introducing commercial industrialism was the time when they were actually persecuting political idealism. When a man was most concerned to get a living by being a manufacturer was the time when he might lose his life by being a Jacobin 3 and the six Acts restraining all liberty of popular protest were improvements that came in with the steam-engine and the spinning- jenny.

The desire to see wheels go round involves the idea that they will always repeat themselves. In one sense it may be called progressive, since when the wheels go round the cart goes on. In another sense it may be called conservative for in assuming that the wheels will go round it assumes that the wheels will not come off. But, above all, when the wheels are really going round rapidly they are generally in a rut. Industrialism is in a rut, and industrial America is rather specially in a rut 3 and none the less so because it can move in such a rut more and more swiftly. What the industrial spirit does not like is anything that cuts across that rut, that barges in at another angle. America is a very great living and complex reality, and everybody must apologize for having any impressions of it at alL But the only sense I can make of its present politics is something like this — that America is now the most conservative country in the world. It is resisting the spirit of revolt and novelty that comes from Europe. It is no longer a question of our calling in the New World to redress the balance of the Old. We are the New World, and we are upsetting the balance of the Old; and it looks as if the balance of America were a good deal upset.