“I like your phrase about jelly,” said Vallance. “It has an odd picturesqueness. Your argument itself—or, rather, your assertion—strikes me as a bit sweeping.”
“All the same,” Markham nodded, “it’s worth thinking over. … Man in the mass, as a crowd, can only feel; there is no such thing as a mass-mind or intellect—only mass desires and emotions. That is what I mean by saying that Meyer—whatever his intelligence or sanity—is the instrument of instinctive emotion. … And instinctive emotion, Holt—until it has been hurt—is damnably and owlishly courageous. It isn’t clever enough to be afraid; not even of red murder—or starvation by the million—or the latest thing in gas or high explosive. Stir it up enough and it’ll run on ’em—as the lemmings run to the sea.”
Holt snorted something that sounded like “Rot!” and Vallance, sprawling an arm along the mantelpiece, asked, “Another of your numerous theories?”
“If you like,” Markham assented, “but it’s a theory deduced from hard facts. … It’s a fact, isn’t it, that no politician takes a crowd into his confidence until he wants to make a fight of it? It’s a fact, isn’t it, that no movements in mass are creative or constructive—that simultaneous action, simultaneous thought, always is and must be destructive? Set what we call the People in motion and something has got to be broken. The crowd-life is still at the elementary, the animal stage; it has not yet acquired the human power of construction … and the crowd, the people, democracy—whatever you like to call it—has been stirring in the last few years; getting conscious again, getting active, looking round for something to break … which means that the politician is faced once more with the necessity of giving it something to break. Naturally he prefers that the breakage should take place in the distance—and, League or no League, the eternal and obvious resource is War … which was not too risky when fought with swords and muskets, but now—as Holt says—is impossible. Being a bit of a chemist, I’m sure Holt is right; but I’m also sure that man, as a herd, does not think. Further, I am doubtful if man, as a herd, ever finds out what is impossible except through the painful process of breaking his head against it.”
“I’m a child in politics,” said Vallance, “and I may be dense—but I’m afraid it isn’t entirely clear to me whether your views are advanced or grossly and shamelessly reactionary?”
“Neither,” said Markham, “or both—you can take your choice. I have every sympathy with the people, the multitude; it’s hard lines that it can only achieve destruction—just because there is so much of it, because it isn’t smaller. But I also sympathize with the politician in his efforts to control the destructive impulse of the multitude. And, finally—in view of that progress of science of which Holt has reminded us, and of which I know a little myself—I’m exceedingly sorry for us all.”
Someone from across the room asked: “You make it war, then?”
“I make it war. We have had peace for more than a generation, so our periodic bloodletting is already a long time overdue. The League has staved it off for a bit, but it hasn’t changed the human constitution; and the real factor in the Karthanian quarrel—or any other—is the periodic need of the human herd for something to break and for something to break itself against. … Resistance and self-sacrifice—the need of them—the call of the lemming to the sea. … And, perhaps, it’s all the stronger in this generation because this generation has never known war, and does not fear it.”
“Education,” said Holt, addressing the air, “is general and compulsory—has been so for a good many years. The inference being that the records of previous wars—and incidentally of the devastation involved—are not inaccessible to that large proportion of our population which is known as the average man.”
“As printed pages, yes,” Markham agreed. “But what proportion even of a literate population is able to accept the statement of a printed page as if it were a personal experience?”
“As we’re not all fools,” Holt retorted, “I don’t make it war.”
“I hope you’re right, for my own sake,” said Markham good-temperedly. He knocked out his pipe as he spoke and made ready to go—while Theodore looked after him, interested, for the moment, disturbingly. … Markham’s unemotional and matter-of-fact acceptance of “periodic bloodletting” made rumour suddenly real, and for the first time Theodore saw the Karthanian imbroglio as more than the substance of telegrams and articles, something human, actual, and alive. … Saw himself, even Phillida, concerned in it—through a medley of confused and threatening shadows. … For the moment he was roused from his self-absorption and thrust into the world that he shared with the common herd of men. He and Phillida were no longer as the gods apart, with their lives to make in Eden; they were little human beings, the sport of a common human destiny. … He remembered how eagerly he caught at Holt’s condemnation of Markham as a crank and Vallance’s next comment on the crisis.
“We had exactly the same scare three—or was it four?—years ago. This is the trouble about Transylvania all over again—just the same alarums and excursions. That fizzled out quietly in a month or six weeks and the chances are that Karthania will fizzle out, too.”
“Of course it will,” Holt declared with emphasis—and proceeded to demolish Markham’s theories. Theodore left before he had finished his argument; as explained dogmatically in Holt’s penetrating voice, the intrigues and dissensions
