Quotation from: The Appetite of Tyranny

Written by: G.K. Chesterton


Now all this is important for this reason. If you consider it carefully
you will see why Europe must, at whatever cost, break Germany in battle:
and put an end to her military and material power to _do_ things. If we all
have to fight for it, if we all have to die for it, it must be done. If we
find allies in the dwarfs of Greenland or the giants of Patagonia, it must
be done. And the reason is that unless it is literally and materially done,
other things will be literally and materially done; and horrify the
heavens. They will be silly things; they will be benighted and limited and
laughable things; but they will be accomplished things. Nothing could be
more ridiculous, if that is all, than the moral position of the Prussian in
Poland; where a magnificent officer, making a vast parade of "ruling,"
tries to cheat poor peasants out of their fields (and gets cheated) and
then takes refuge in beating little boys for saying their prayers in their
native tongue. All who remember anything of dignity, of irony, in short of
Rome and reason, can see why an officer need not, should not, had better
not, and generally does not, beat little boys. But an officer _can_ beat
little boys: and a Prussian officer will go on doing it until you take away
the stick. Nothing could be more comic, if that is all, than the position
of Prussians in Alsace: which they declare to be purely German and admit to
be furiously French; so that they have to terrorise it by sabring anybody,
including cripples. Again, any of us can see why an officer need not,
should not, had better not, and generally does not, sabre a cripple. But an
officer _can_ sabre a cripple; and a Prussian officer will go on doing it
until you take away the sabre. It is this insane and rigid realism that
makes their case peculiar: like that of a Chinaman copying something, or a
half-witted servant taking a message. If they had the power to put black
and white posts round the grave of Virgil, or dig up Dante to see if he had
yellow hair, the mere _doing_ of it which for some of us would be the most
unlikely, would for them be the least unlikely thing. They do not hear the
laughter of the ages. If they had the power to treat the English or Italian
Premier quite literally as a traitor, and shoot him against a wall, they
are quite capable of turning such hysterical rhetoric into reality: and
scattering his brains before they had collected their own. They do not feel
atmospheres. They are all a little deaf; as they are all a little
short-sighted. They are annoyed when their enemies, after such experiences
as those of Belgium, accuse them of breaking their promises. And in one
sense they are right; for there are some sorts of promises they probably
would keep. If they have promised to respect a free country, or an old
friend, to observe a sworn partnership, or to spare a harmless population,
they will find such restrictions chilling and irksome. They will ask some
professor on what principle they are discarding it. But if they have
promised to shoot the cross off a church spire, or empty the inkpot into
somebody's beer, or bring home somebody's ears in their pocket for the
pleasure of their families, I think in these cases they would feel a sort
of a shadow of what civilised men feel in the fulfilment of a promise, as
distinct from the making of it. And, in consideration of such cases, I
cannot go the whole length of those severe critics who say that a Prussian
will never keep his promise.

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