On Flags

In recent times the flags of all nations have tended to run to stripes, whether they were the narrow stripes of the American flag or the broad stripes of the French flag. Despite all we say, often truly enough, about the complexity of the modern world, there is a real sense in which modern things tend to simplicity 3 and sometimes to too much simplicity. In that fashion of tricolours which was started by the more or less rationalistic revolt of the French nation at the end of the eighteenth century, there is much of such harsh simplicity. There is something perhaps of the mathematical spirit of the pure logician 3 marching into battle under a banner that is like a diagram of Euclid. His nearest approach to heraldry is a picture of parallel straight lines which cannot meet. It is as if there were lifted above the lances and the sabres an ensign in the form of an isosceles triangle or a flag cut in a pattern to illustrate the square on the hypotenuse. That French flag of the three colours has been so gloriously coloured with heroism and martyrdom and the romance of revolution 5 with splendid victories and with defeats more splendid than victories, that it has become vividly romantic in retrospect 5 and more magnificent than all the eagles and leopards of the kings. But it is not at all improbable that those who originally designed it were men moving about in the cold innocence of the dawn of nationalism, who supposed that they were planning something as purely rational as the pattern of a machine. They may have cut up the flag into sections as they cut up the country into departments, ignoring the romantic traditions of the old provinces of France. They may have done it as calmly and confidently as they broke up the old crowns and coins of the great duchies into the exact equality of the decimal system. But romance has reappeared, not only in spite of the rational republic, but actually in the form of the rational republic. And the other nations, that have copied France in this as in so many other things, have varied the conception and the colours in ways that are more symbolic than anything required for the practical numbering of the nation. The black and gold and scarlet of the flag of Flanders carries the memory of the lion of Brabant j there is a significant hope of unity in the orange strip at the end of the new Irish flag 5 it might be called the Unceltic Fringe. And it was not for nothing, nor without another and even better sort of hope in the augury, that even into the new tricolour of Cavour and Garibaldi there crept a chivalric shield bearing the symbol of the cross. Perhaps this modern simplification in political symbols might be compared not only to the simplification in science but to the simplification in art. Stevenson said that a geometrical problem was an exact and luminous parallel to a work of artj and many of the artists of his period undoubtedly loved to simplify their art to such an extreme. In those days the critics often complained that the pictures of Whistler were mere bands of flat colour, a slab of grey for the sky and a slab of green for the seaj the whole having indeed something of the same flatness as the flags. Whistler, that very militant person, might well be said to have marched Into battle waving a tricolour of grey, black and Chinese white. But here again the same general principle holds 3 and even simplicity preserved the tendency to variety j and especially to national variety. It was soon found that character could not be simplified for nothing or rationalized out of existence. And in no case was this more marked than in the very countries where science was supposed to be most abstract or art most impersonal. Nothing, for instance, could be more impersonal than impressionism j but anybody studying Its origins will receive a very French impression. Both in science and art it was found that even a universal simplification did not get rid of a fundamental division, like the three divisions In the simplest tricolour flag.

But there is a special truth in this symbol which specially affects the intercourse of nations. It may be stated under the same figure of speech. The Belgian flag may be, as Whistler would put it, an arrangement in black and yellow and red, or the Italian a different effect produced by the introduction of white and green. But there are flags that are arrangements in the same colours j only that they are differently arranged. And this is perhaps the nearest metaphor by which we can describe a very vital and even dangerous similarity and dissimilarity. The French republican flag is of red, white, and bluej but so, for that matter, is the Union Jackj so also is the Stars and Stripes. When Napoleon forced the English out of Toulon, when Nelson broke the French at Trafalgar, the glorious battle-flags reared against each other in that heroic combat were both tricolours of the same blended hues. When the victory of the Chesapeake raised Old Glory for a moment above the mistress of the seas, it was still a new flag but an old tricolour. And the hearty old English Tories, who loved to sing over their port the patriotic song which ran "Three Cheers for the Red, White, and Blue," would have been considerably annoyed, not to say agitated, if some polite Frenchman had bowed in acknowledgment of this compliment to the Republic and the Revolution. They would have been still more annoyed if some breezy and brotherly Anglo-Saxon from Alabama had expressed his gratification at finding that the old country had got wise to the go-ahead virtues of the Stars and Stripes. All the colours would indeed be the same 5 all would be familiar with the look of blue or red 3 and any AngloSaxon might, if he liked, compare the blue to the sea which was common to the two nations or the red to the blood that is thicker than water. But the fact remains that what affects people in practice is not the tints they use but the pictures that they make. In this sense form is much more powerful than col-our. Men see a sign, an emblem, an object, before they see the polychrome elements that make it up. And, as I have already suggested, these things are an allegory.

What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar things j it is rather not finding them in the familiar place. It is not so much that he cannot find red, white, and blue on the French or American flagj but that he always finds red where he expects blue and blue where he expects white. The actual mixture of human and ethical elements in the different countries is not so very different. The amount of good and evil is pretty much what it is everywhere in the moral balance and mortal battle of the soul of man. In that sense we may say that every nation is an arrangement in black and white. Perhaps it is rather like an unkind historical allusion to say that American history has been written in black and white. And yet that historical allusion would be an excellent historical illustration. All through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries America and England were astonished at each other 5 not because either was complete or consistent, but because each had inequality where the other expected equality. The English knew that they had not got rid of a squirearchy, which many of them already wanted to get rid of 3 but they said to themselves with satisfaction that if they had squires, at least they did not have slaves. The Americans admitted that they had not got rid of the slaves j many of them admitted it with regret or shame j but they felt that if they had slaves, at least they also had citizens. They felt that, in comparison, England had no notion even of the nature of citizens. These cross purposes can be seen in the great national figures of both nations. An advanced democrat like Jefferson still has slaves. An antiquated Tory like Johnson is yet horrified at slavery. But Jefferson could not conceive how Johnson could submit to an old fool like George IIL Still less could he understand the acceptation of aristocracy j as little as the other could understand the acceptation of slavery. We might almost say that in the one case there were lords and no slaves and in the other slaves and no lords. But that sort of misunderstanding always perplexes the mutual understanding of nations. And in no case is this stronger than in the present relations of England and America. I have deliberately taken an old and familiar example, as I have taken an obvious and popular metaphor, to make clear this point about the difference between elements and the relation of elements, between col-ours and the arrangement of colours. And in these days when people are talking so much about the necessity of peace and international sympathy, I suggest it as one of the problems on which there has been much talking and perhaps not quite enough thinking.

XV. ON SENTIMENT •

In reading some recent discussions about Victorian fiction I have come upon a curious fallacy about what is called sentiment. It is generally called sentimentalism or sentimentality. The term, in any case, is always applied in a bad sense. And it is almost always applied exactly where it does not apply. There are apparently some people so constituted that they are sickened by any sentiment concerned with certain simple and popular things 3 such as the love of mothers or the charm of children. They wince at the very word "mother" 3 and quiver with intellectual disgust at the very mention of any such sentiment as "women and children first." But this sort of fastidiousness or disdain is the very opposite of what it professes to be. So far from being an attack on sentiment it is itself an excess of sensibility. It has the supreme sentimental fault of being affected by the mere associations of words, instead of by the intrinsic idea in things. There is nothing of illusion, or even of superficiality, in recognizing the importance of the emotions belonging to these things. There is nothing weak about showing such feelings 3 there is nothing realistic about denying such feelings. The feelings are facts 3 they are even very fundamental facts. We are not the less dealing with facts, because we are dealing with a very large number of facts. You may be so constituted, in your nervous system, that what is common rapidly becomes commonplace. But that is because your emotions are easily exhausted 5 not because the subject is exhausted. Your attitude is really and truly sentimental 5 because it is subjective. It is affected by repetition j but it is not in touch with the reality about the things repeated. As an objective fact, the hundredth blade of grass is as green as the first blade of grass. The hundredth sunbeam is as bright as the first sunbeam. And the hundredth child murdered by King Herod is as pathetic as the first. King Herod may have come to the end of his pleasure 3 but the mother has not come to the end of her pain. And her pain is a plain fact of nature, absolutely radical and realistic 5 as solid as a lump of rock. It has every quality of ^tonej antiquity, universality, simplicity, permanence. And a stone is not any the less a stone because it is not the only pebble on the beach.

It is obvious that anti-sentimentalism is only a rather priggish and a rather snobbish form of sentimentalism. The fastidious person is really preferring feelings to facts. Nevertheless, we all know that there is something weak and deleterious that deserves to be called sentimentalism. Only, as is commonly the case today, hardly anybody makes any attempt at defining the thing he is always denouncing j finding it much easier to denounce than to define. I will not claim a final definition here, but I will suggest a principle as a practical test. The sin of sentimentalism only occurs when somebody indulges a feeling, sometimes even a real feeling, at the prejudice of something equally real, which also has its rights. The most common form of this dishonesty is what is called "having it both ways." I have always felt it in the conventionalized laxity of fashionable divorce 5 where people want to change their partners as rapidly as at a dance, and yet want again and again to thrill at the heroic finality of the sacramental vow, which is like the sound of a trumpet. They want to eat their wedding cake and have it.

It is as healthy to enjoy sentiment as to enjoy jam. In the evil of sentimentalism there must always be some suggestion of stealing jam. It has many milder forms and lighter occasions than those above mentioned, which I am not going to debate again. All that concerns me here is the general definition 3 that the evil is not in the recognition of the feeling as a fact 5 or even in the enjoyment of the feeling as a fact J it is in the destruction or the dishonouring of some other fact. It is in the attempt to combine a fact and falsehood in one act of the mind. It is not silly to think that a young soldier looks splendid with a plume or a sword, riding away to the tune of

"The Girl I Left Behind Me." Soldiers do go to battle and do leave girls behind 3 and the passions involved are not only romantic but real. But if we then make fancy pictures of war, and refuse to admit that wounds hurt, or that heroes can be killed, or that good causes can be defeated, then we are trying to hold two contrary conceptions in the mind at once. We want to admire the soldier and deny what is admirable in him.

In connexion with Victorian literature, I will take a popular example j a play which everybody knows, which nearly everybody enjoys and admires j which I certainly heartily enjoy and admire 3 but which has not escaped the charge of sentimentality. And what strikes me as odd is that it is blamed where it does not fail, and not half so much blamed where it does. I mean Sir James Barrie's famous fantasia of "Peter Pan." I am not dealing with the aspect of it that I like most 3 the pirate with the hook or the crocodile with the clock inside it. It would surely be an excess of sensibility to see anything particularly sentimental about them. But many sensible people have complained very scornfully of the opening of the final scene 3 of the bereaved mother moving sadly about the room or playing soft music on the piano. I am not sure that I agree with this complaint 3 though of course it depends how the thing is done. But real sentimentalism is a sin against reality 3 and this is not really a sin against reality. Mothers do miss their children j a mother probably would think of them with affection if the house were suddenly empty 3 possibly with more affection than at those exciting moments when it seems a little too full. Some ladies do play on pianos, though the taste is doubtless liable to abuse ^ and music is a perfectly genuine way of relieving the emotions. There is nothing really false in all thisj and indeed the critics do not really mean that it is false, but only that it is familiar. Yet there is something that does ring false in the play, and it seems to have been much less criticized. The final decision of Peter Pan was a bad example of having it both ways. What is really wrong with that delightful masterpiece is that the master asked a question and ought to have answered it. But he could not bring himself to answer itj or rather he tried to say yes and no in one word. A very fine problem of poetic philosophy might be presented as the problem of Peter Pan. He is represented as a sort of everlasting elf, a child who never changes age after age, but who in this story falls in love with a little girl who is a normal person. He is given his choice between becoming normal with her or remaining immortal without herj and either choice might have been made a fine and effective thing. He might have said that he was a god, that he loved all but could not live for anyj that he

ON SENTIMENT loi belonged not to them but to multitudes of unborn babes. Or he might have chosen love, with the inevitable result of love, which is incarnation^ and the inevitable result of incarnation, which is crucifixion j yes, if it were only crucifixion by becoming a clerk in a bank and growing old. But it was the fork of the road^ and even in fairyland you cannot walk down two roads at once. The one real fault of sentimentalism in this fairy play is the compromise that is ultimately madej whereby he shall go free for ever but meet his human friend once a year. Like most practical compromises, it is the most unpractical of all possible courses of action. Even the baby in that nursery could have seen that Wendy would be ninety in no time, after what would appear to her immortal lover a mere idle half-hour. But I only mention it here as the first example that occurs to me of the sentimental fault where it really exists^ and the way in which it is often alleged where it does not exist. It is not sentimental, in the bad sense, to make a mother play on a piano j because the notes on a piano only profess to be notes and not words that define and decide. But it is sentimentalism to use words in order to confuse and weaken, when they ought to define and decide. It is not sentimental to deal with things of sentiment such as tone or melody or minor graces of life. It is not false to be sentimental about these things that are avowedly things of sentiment. The evil comes in when we waver about weighty matters j not when we allow gossamer and thistledown to follow their own nature, which is to waver. And it may be noted that many great periods in the past, strong in arms and in counsel, gaining triumphs and building codes of law, reconstructing civilization or reawakening religion, were none the less very sentimental about lesser and lighter things. The great days of the Grand Siecle, of the Revolution, and of Napoleon were full of china shepherdesses and litde opera tunes. But the great men of those days did not hesitate between the King and the Republic as we hesitate between a hundred new religions and stale philosophies. There is nothing feeble-minded about playing the flute, considered as playing the flute. But if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for the battle?