The sea teaches one the vastness and the number of things, and, therefore, the necessary presence of incalculable elements, perpetually defeating all our calculations. The sea, which teaches all wisdom, certainly does not teach any man to despise human reason. I suppose there was never yet any Kantian fool or worser pragmatist who would not have been cured of his folly by half a week of moderate weather off the Onion. No one can at sea forego the human reason or doubt that things are things, or that true ideas are true. But the sea does teach one that the human reason, working from a number of known premises, must always be on its guard, lest the conclusion be upset in practice by the irruption of other premises, unknown or not considered. In plain words, the sea makes a man practical; and the practical man is, I suppose, as much the contrary of the pragmatist as the sociable man is the contrary of the socialist, or the peaceable man the contrary of the pacifist.
And, talking of pacifists, there is nothing more pleasing to note than the excellent unconscious patriotism of the men and women who solemnly propose that patriotism is the ruin of the world.
There is a delightful irony in observing how intensely national these anti-nationalists are! It is a profound and satisfying thing to watch. Anyone can get a good laugh out of the patriotism of men with no nation, or, at any rate, with a nationality very different from that which they profess. It is a common jest, the sham patriotism of the nomads. But far more subtle and penetrating is the fun of watching your genuine pacifist, who believes the divisions between nations to be evil artifices, soon to be conjured away.
Nowhere are these international pacifists more national than in England. They have all the English spontaneity and love of adventure. They carry to extreme that English love of individual action which we nearly always find associated with their odd political blindness. They nearly all display some trick of clothing or food. They will drink lime-juice instead of wine, or wear elastic-sided boots, or think it wrong to smoke tobacco, or go about without hats. If they are men, they will have hair coming down to their shoulders, which is a very greasy habit. If they are women they will go about barefoot, save for the most absurd sandals; and while they practise all these provincial follies they will be consumed with a passion for the general of mankind.
If you wanted to get a specimen—I do not say of the average Englishman, for he is certainly not that—but of a being in whom the English characteristics are to be found most deeply marked, this pacifist is the very man whom you should choose. All the English conceptions of right and wrong, all the English habits of thought, all the sheltered English attitude towards the great outer world, all the local errors, and much of the local generosity are there present to the full.
I cannot help thinking it a strength to England that the pacifist or internationalist in England should be so intensely English. It prevents any disruptive effect, and it therefore prevents the rivals of this country taking such folk seriously.
The French and Italians are far less happily circumstanced in this regard. In those two countries—and, I suppose, in Spain also, although there I have less knowledge on which to speak—the internationalist is an internationalist, bearing but weakly the common marks of his own people, and willing to act not only against his country politically, but also in all his being, morally and spiritually. A French or Italian internationalist and pacifist will not only sympathise with the enemies of his country, not only give them actively all the help he can, but he will particularly attack the soul whereby his country lives, its traditions and character. If he is French he will hate wine, if Italian, macaroni. But does the English pacifist hate tea? The unrooted man is a very dangerous type, and in England happily unknown. To read anything said or written by such men as Mr. Wells or Mr. Snowden is to read something by people who evidently think of international peace as something closely connected with cricket, teetotalism, and the use of Bible language—coupled, of course, with a reverent agnosticism, which means a wearied puritanism.
I have spoken of their courage, and certainly the courage of the typical conscientious objectors during the War was an arresting thing.
One of the most famous had been a fairly close acquaintance of mine many years ago. I had known him to be a man of eccentric nature, hardly mad. But I could not have believed he would have stood up as he did to the martyrdom which he was made to suffer. The violence of his protest against all violence was an admirable thing.
A lesser form of the paradox in these people is their hatred of the French, and their passion for Prussia. This love of Berlin would seem to be compounded of two elements, partly a natural desire to support the losing side, but much more the strong religious sympathy they have with the Northern German in Europe, and the hatred they feel (very naturally!) for the Catholic culture, of which the French are the chief representatives.
They preached a universal similarity. Yet there were very few of them who would not have joyfully watched the most bloody war against the French at any time after the Armistice, and none of them would have doubted one moment of the issue: for they had prepared for war in the best of all possible fashions by refusing to arm. Such men are confident that their
