(Late Editor of "The Capital," Washington, D. C.)
Where are the debaters whose rapier tongues ripped up the rag dolls of Congress and kept the floor of the House supplied with fresh saw-dust, whose fantastic fencing and heart-piercing thrusts were the delight of the gallery and the terror of fire eaters. Gone, gone where the woodbine twineth. What went they out for to see? A reed shaken by the wind? There is a difference in reeds. Tom Reed of Maine shook the House, but the House never shook him. What were his favorite drinks? There was plenty to choose from in the Washington of his day. But note the difference between the wit of the Maine Reed and that of the Missouri Reed.
On the other hand, where did Bryan get the "cross of gold" inspiration in the old days? Did he do it on tannic acid released from tea leaves? Who will ever know? One thing is certain--he never again rose to the same level.
Is our planet revolving toward a second edition of puritanism? Probably.
The esprit de corps that animated the body politic begins to resemble a corpse with the esprit evaporated.
The human mind needs moments of exaltation as well as relaxation.
Brilliant results are not produced by lukewarm sentiments expressed in a voice that lacks enthusiasm.
Washington is now a resort for celluloid cynics and a refuge for asbestos patriots whose marmorian snobbery makes me think of the ruins of temples abandoned by the gods and forgotten by man.
The great blunder of the prohibitionists was made when they condemned beer and light wine. Nature abhors abruptness. Progress is not made by sudden jerks and violent laws passed in a hurry.
If a few persons living in an obscure village in Ohio can bring about a movement like prohibition, the same influence can bring about a return of the old Connecticut blue laws.
Violent actions are followed by violent reactions. From this there is no escape.
The fundamental objection to prohibition, as it stands, lies in the cold fact that provincialism, no matter how sincere, can never compete with international common sense and cosmopolitan culture.
Village residents are ignorant of the laws that govern society in the most intelligent centers of the world. What will be the result in the long run?
Antagonism between the people of the cities and the people of the country.
When they prohibit tobacco, a war of cuss words will be followed by a battle of cuspidors, and the very crows will cuss the crocuses.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
Some Members of Parliament have lost their reason, the majority have lost their wits, all are without vision.
Lloyd George presents the curious spectacle of a man of the people who observes them through the glasses of a Welsh Calvinist. He is a democrat with the demeanor of a lord, a radical who has fallen between the two stools of the middle-class and the landed aristocracy. Nonconformist sentimentality, on one hand, and titled wealth on the other, have blinded him to the imperative needs of the time and the dangers that confront the Empire.
The English people of the past twenty years have suffered as much from misgovernment as the Germans and the Russians, but they cannot stop the present stream of progress by clatter in the House and appeals to patriotism.
For years England has been saddled with cabinets composed of professional humorists and hum-drum moralists.
Augustine Birrell was a diluted edition of Sydney Smith, and Bonar Law should have been a professor of theology in a Presbyterian seminary. Sir Edward Carson played the role of an unfrocked priest in the service of demiurgos. Earl Curzon is a political derelict whose presence in the Council Chamber prevents unity and impedes progress.
History will record their acts as the most amazing in the annals of Great Britain. I see nothing for the old order but unconditional surrender. The hand-writing on the wall was visible in 1909, but no preparation was made for the change which is now sweeping the country with cyclonic force.
We, from our side, can do no more than utter some words of warning for the few who have ears to hear, the tidal wave of change not being confined to particular countries or regions.
I, too, when Prime Minister, was blind to the reality, having been born and reared in an atmosphere as foreign to that of the masses as the atmosphere of the Winter Palace was foreign to the peasants of Russia.
We staggered under the load of a wealthy and titled upper class. They consumed the people's time and imposed infinite misery on some millions of toilers, and for these things we rewarded the men at the top with fresh titles.
As you know, I led the Conservative Party in England for many years, but that Party was, and still is, avid for power.
The Liberal Party was made up of men using Nonconformity as an instrument of advancement. They placed opportunity above the truth, position above principle, power above progress. We were all intellectual automatons, set in motion by springs wound up by leaders who were themselves automatons.
England goes by machinery. Her very existence is mechanical. Now, when a loose screw stops the evolution of the wheels, the whole nation stops.
In what way can we be said to excel in probity of conduct the people of Ireland? In what way are we superior to Irish politicians? The scandals that occurred in London during the war would not have been tolerated in Dublin under an Irish Parliament. And still England is being led by a Welsh Calvinist, opposed by a Scottish humorist who says his prayers, backed by Anglican agnostics and middle-class dissenters overwhelmed with fear.
We always imitate the French, but while we accepted Voltairianism in principle, the French had the courage to put it into practice.
While the French became practical pagans in 1789, we became practical hypocrites.
It is this element that has created the moral indifference of the Anglican Church and the intellectual apathy of the so-called Nonconformist conscience. This is why there is no stability behind the old phraseology, the old ceremonials, the old confessions of faith--now so many catch-words which the people abhor. And this is why the working men find it so easy to send their leaders to Parliament. For the same reason Russian radicalism is certain of a warm welcome on English soil.
It is true that this hypocrisy is subconscious, having had its origin during the French Revolution. This renders it far more dangerous because political leaders in England today are mentally incompetent to realize the danger that lies before them.
We cannot reason with people whose vision is dulled by four generations of moral apathy. Hence they will continue to "kick against the pricks" to the bitter end. There will be strife added to strife, confusion to confusion, and they, themselves, will invite the drastic events which must follow so much stubborn resistance to the demands of common justice and the progress of civilization.
PRINCE BISMARCK
Recorded November 3d, 1920
When I imposed an indemnity of five billion francs on the French people in 1870 we knew that the money could and would be paid. But there is no parallel between Germany in 1920 and France in 1870. The Reparations Commission has only succeeded in proving its incompetence. The German delegates have shown that the Allied war claims amount to more than five hundred billion marks (gold), which is nearly four thousand billions at the present rate of exchange.
This fantastic sum, one hundred times more than France paid to Germany in 1870, is expected of a country on the verge of revolution and chaos. I charge this Commission with incompetence, extravagance, luxurious living, and claims at once absurd and ridiculous.
You punish some of the most dangerous criminals by indeterminate sentences, which frequently end after a year's imprisonment, but you expect to hold the German people in financial bondage for more than a generation to come because of the criminal blunders of less than a hundred individuals.
I was blinded by material factors at the time of my seeming triumphs but now I can see some of the things which will never come to pass. The French and the English are repeating some of the blunders I made fifty years ago.
They are counting on conditions which will never exist, like a bird sitting on a nest of mixed eggs from which the cuckoo will eventually oust all the other birds.
French people are under the illusion that Russia will meet the obligations undertaken by the late Czar. To expect such a thing shows the child-like illusions under which French fanatics are living. They are still wrapped in the swaddling clothes of politics.
We committed crimes that have brought civilization to the brink of chaos, but we are not capable of such naivete.
The logic of a Frenchman is no better than the mysticism of a Russian or the sentimentality of an Englishman. French people learned nothing from the blunders of Napoleon III and the debacle of Sedan. And the reason?
They have remained provincial while the Germans imitated the commercial cosmopolitanism of the English.
Advice is the cheapest of all things. Nevertheless, I advise your statesmen to place no reliance on sentimental contracts written on paper foredoomed to become "scraps."
I do not hesitate to declare that no agreement signed since 1913 is worth more than the seals. In Europe, leaders and rulers have passed from an international game of chess to a national gamble with marked cards.
You have now to deal with an element which did not exist in my time. This element embraces all factions of the new radicalism, no matter in what country or under what leader. Some of these elements may unite, but they are not going to change. How, then, can you undertake to insure the future by contracts signed and sealed by elderly gentlemen with good intentions and poor judgment?