THE AMNESTY FOR AGGRESSION

Utopia of Userers, et al

by Gilbert K. Chesterton

THE AMNESTY FOR AGGRESSION, UTOPIA OF USERERS, ET AL by Gilbert K. Chesterton
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If there is to rise out of all this red ruin something like a republic of
justice, it is essential that our views should be real views; that is,
glimpses of lives and landscapes outside ourselves. It is essential that
they should not be mere opium visions that begin and end in smoke--and so
often in cannon smoke. I make no apology, therefore, for returning to the
purely practical and realistic point I urged last week: the fact that we
shall lose everything we might have gained if we lose the idea that the
responsible person is responsible.

For instance, it is almost specially so with the one or two things in
which the British Government, or the British public, really are behaving
badly. The first, and worst of them, is the non-extension of the
Moratorium, or truce of debtor and creditor, to the very world where there
are the poorest debtors and thc cruellest creditors. This is infamous:
and should be, if possible, more infamous to those who think the war right
than to those who think it wrong. Everyone knows that the people who can
least pay their debts are the people who are always trying to. Among the
poor a payment may be as rash as a speculation. Among the rich a
bankruptcy may be as safe as a bank. Considering the class from which
private soldiers are taken, there is an atrocious meanness in the idea of
buying their blood abroad, while we sell their sticks at home. The
English language, by the way, is full of delicate paradoxes. We talk of
the private soldiers because they are really public soldiers; and we talk
of the public schools because they are really private schools. Anyhow,
the wrong is of the sort that ought to be resisted, as much in war as in
peace.


Ought to Be Hammered

But as long as we speak of it as a cloudy conclusion, come to by an
anonymous club called Parliament, or a masked tribunal called the Cabinet,
we shall never get such a wrong righted. Somebody is officially
responsible for the unfairness; and that somebody ought to be hammered.
The other example, less important but more ludicrous, is the silly boycott
of Germans in England, extending even to German music. I do not believe
for a moment that the English people feel any such insane fastidiousness.
Are the English artists who practise the particularly English art of
water-colour to be forbidden to use Prussian blue? Are all old ladies to
shoot their Pomeranian dogs? But though England would laugh at this, she
will get the credit of it, and will continue: until we ask who the actual
persons are who feel sure that we should shudder at a ballad of the Rhine.
It is certain that we should find they are capitalists. It is very
probable that we should find they are foreigners.

Some days ago the Official Council of the Independent Labour Party, or the
Independent Council of the Official Labour Party, or the Independent and
Official Council of the Labour Party (I have got quite nervous about these
names and distinctions; but they all seem to say the same thing) began
their manifesto by saying it would be difficult to assign the degrees of
responsibility which each nation had for the outbreak of the war.
Afterwards, a writer in the "Christian Commonwealth," lamenting war in the
name of Labour, but in the language of my own romantic middle-class, said
that all the nations must share the responsibility for this great calamity
of war. Now exactly as long as we go on talking like that we shall have
war after war, and calamity after calamity, until the crack of doom. It
simply amounts to a promise of pardon to any person who will start a
quarrel. It is an amnesty for assassins. The moment any man assaults any
other man he makes all the other men as bad as himself. He has only to
stab, and to vanish in a fog of forgetfulness. The real eagles of iron,
the predatory Empires, will be delighted with this doctrine. They will
applaud the Labour Concert or Committee, or whatever it is called. They
will willingly take all the crime, with only a quarter of the conscience:
they will be as ready to share the memory as they are to share the spoil.
The Powers will divide responsibility as calmly as they divided Poland.


The Whole Loathsome Load

But I still stubbornly and meekly submit my point: that you cannot end war
without asking who began it. If you think somebody else, not Germany,
began it, then blame that somebody else: do not blame everybody and nobody.
Perhaps you think that a small sovereign people, fresh from two
triumphant wars, ought to discrown itself before sunrise; because the
nephew of a neighbouring Emperor has been shot by his own subjects. Very
well. Then blame Servia; and, to the extent of your influence, you may be
preventing small kingdoms being obstinate or even princes being shot.
Perhaps you think the whole thing was a huge conspiracy of Russia, with
France as a dupe and Servia as a pretext. Very well. Then blame Russia;
and, to the extent of your influence, you may be preventing great Empires
from making racial excuses for a raid. Perhaps you think France wrong
for feeling what you call "revenge," and I should call recovery of stolen
goods. Perhaps you blame Belgium for being sentimental about her frontier;
or England for being sentimental about her word. If so, blame them; or
whichever of them you think is to blame. Or again, it is barely possible
that you may think, as I do, that the whole loathsome load has been laid
upon us by the monarchy which I have not named; still less wasted time in
abusing. But if there be in Europe a military State which has not the
religion of Russia, yet has helped Russia to tyrannise over the Poles,
that State cares not for religion, but for tyranny. If there be a State
in Europe which has not the religion of the Austrians, but has helped
Austria to bully the Servians, that State cares not for belief, but for
bullying. If there be in Europe any people or principality which respects
neither republics nor religions, to which the political ideal of Paris is
as much a myth as the mystical ideal of Moscow, then blame that: and do
more than blame. In the healthy and highly theological words of Robert
Blatchford, drive it back to the Hell from which it came.


Crying Over Spilt Blood

But whatever you do, do not blame everybody for what was certainly done by
somebody. It may be it is no good crying over spilt blood, any more than
over spilt milk. But we do not find the culprit any more by spilling the
milk over everybody; or by daubing everybody with blood. Still less do we
improve matters by watering the milk with our tears, nor the blood either.
To say that everybody is responsible means that nobody is responsible.
If in the future we see Russia annexing Rutland (as part of the old
Kingdom of Muscovy), if we see Bavaria taking a sudden fancy to the Bank
of England, or the King of the Cannibal Islands suddenly demanding a
tribute of edible boys and girls from England and America, we may be quite
certain also that the Leader of the Labour Party will rise, with a slight
cough, and say: "It would be a difficult task to apportion the blame
between the various claims which..."