by Anthology
"Mr. Johnson is putting the case much too mildly," interposed Villele.' There are in the 'reports' issued by the Government on all sorts of matters, but particularly with regard to foreign affairs, falsifications of fact of the most barefaced character. Now the writers of the school and college histories quote very extensively from these official reports, implying always that the statements are true. Further than this, you know, but not perhaps as well as we do, that in countries where speech is free and the Press is free there are any number of libellous writers who vilify their opponents in a shameless fashion. In Luniland in particular, if my friend will pardon my saying so, there are enthusiasts for some particular cause who have no sense whatever of proportion. For instance, to hear some of the so-called Temperance advocates you would imagine that the Lunilanders were a nation of drunkards, wifebeaters, seducers, abandoned wretches of every kind. To listen to their Socialist fanatics you would imagine that every working man was a down-trodden slave. To listen to their anti-vivisectionists you would imagine that the whole medical profession spent its leisure in the sport of torturing animals. To listen to some of the priests you would think the whole nation was sunk in vice.
To listen to the anti-priests you would think the priests were a tribe of grasping hypocrites, and so on and so on. Now you will find Meccanian histories, and works on the social and political life of foreign nations, full of quotations from such writers."
"As I said at the outset," remarked Johnson, "this may seem a little thing in itself, but it is symptomatic and characteristic. Look at an entirely different aspect of the system. The whole teaching profession is honeycombed with sycophancy. Every teacher is a spy upon every other. Every one tries to show his zeal, and gain some promotion, by a display of the Meccanian spirit. As you know, there are no private schools. There is not a single independent teacher in the whole country. It is in the Universities even more than in the schools that sycophancy runs riot."
"That may be perfectly true," I said, "but would you not get this disease of sycophancy wherever you have a bureaucracy, quite apart from Militarism? Suppose there were no army at all, but suppose that the State were the sole employer and controller of every person and thing, you might still have all the petty tyranny and sycophancy that you describe."
"But there is a difference," said Johnson. "Under a mere bureaucracy it is still possible for the large groups of workers to combine, and very effectually, to safeguard their interests; especially if at the same time there is a real parliamentary system. Indeed, many years ago one of the strongest arguments brought forward in Luniland against any large extension of State employment was that the employees, through their trade combinations, would be able to exert political pressure, and rather exploit the State than be exploited by it. No, I maintain that a military autocracy without a bureaucracy may be brutal and tyrannical, in a spasmodic sort of way; but it is loose- jointed and clumsy: a bureaucracy apart from a military control of the State may be meddlesome and irritating; but it is only when you get the two combined that the people are bound hand and foot. Anyhow, I cannot conceive of the whole teaching profession, including the highest as well as the lowest branches, being so completely enslaved as it is here, without there being a driving power at the back of the bureaucratic machine, such as only Militarism can supply in our times—for religion is out of the question."
"Well, now, is there any other sort of evidence," I said, "that the educational system is inspired by Militarism? So far the case is' not proven.'
"The cultivation of' the Meccanian spirit,' which is one of the prime aims of all the teaching, points at any rate in the same direction."
"But the Meccanian spirit is only another name for patriotism, is it not?" I said.
"Your scepticism," remarked Villele,' would almost make one suppose you were becoming a convert to Meccanianism."
"Not at all," I said. "I have tried to get firsthand information on these matters and I have failed. Here I am, listening to you who are avowedly, if I may say so in your presence, anti- Meccanians." They both nodded assent. "Would it not be foolish of me to accept your views without at any rate sifting the evidence as fully as I am able? It has this advantage, I shall be much more likely to become convinced of the correctness of your opinions if I find that you meet the hypothetical objections I raise than if I merely listen to your views."
"The Meccanian spirit is another name for patriotism," said Johnson; "but it is Meccanian patriotism. Patriotism is not a substitute for Ethics in the rest of Europe, nor was it in Meccania two centuries ago. Absolute obedience to the State is definitely inculcated here. No form of resistance is possible. Resistance is never dreamt of; the Meccanian spirit implies active co-operation with the Super-State, not passive obedience only but reverence and devotion. And remember that the Super-State when you probe under the surface is the Second Class, the Military Caste."
"But do not all States inculcate obedience to themselves?" I said.
"No," replied Johnson bluntly. "They may inculcate obedience to the laws for the time being; it is only Churches claiming Divine inspiration that arrogate to themselves infallibility, and demand unconditional obedience. In the rest of Europe the State is one of the organs—a most necessary and important organ—of the community: here, the State or the Super-State is the Divinity in which society lives and moves and has its being. It is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent."
"Admitting all you say about the deliberate policy of the Super-State," I answered, "is it not strange that a hundred millions of people submit themselves to it, and that even outside Meccania there are many advocates of Meccanian principles?
"Tyrannies have flourished in the world in every age," replied Johnson, "because there is something even worse than Tyranny. To escape a plague a man will take refuge in a prison. Anarchy, such as that which broke out in Idiotica some fifty years ago, was a godsend to the rulers of Meccania. They persuaded the public that there was a choice only between the Super-State and Anarchy or Bolshevism as it was then called. We know that is false. Liberty may be attacked by an open enemy or by a secret and loathsome disease; but that is no reason for surrendering either to the one or the other."
Chapter XI
AN ACADEMIC DISCUSSION
IT was some days after this conversation with my friends at the hotel that I was present at a dinner-party given by the President of Mecco University. There were about thirty guests, so that at table a general conversation was almost impossible; I could hear only what was said by those close to me. I was seated between a member of the diplomatic corps and a general. General Wolf, a benevolent-looking old gentleman with a large, coarse face and a double chin, seemed rather disappointed that I could not discuss with him the Higher Mathematics. He deplored the neglect of Mathematics in Meccania. He admitted that unless a person had a mathematical brain it was useless to attempt to make him a mathematician; but he said the Eugenics section of the Health Department was not sufficiently alive to the importance of improving the mathematical stock. He railed very bitterly against a member of the Eugenics Board who had tried to get authority to improve the supply of artists. Happily the Board had turned down his proposals. Count Hardflogg, who wore the Mechow whisker and an eyeglass, and frowned fiercely at everything one said to him, was full of a recent report by the experts in the Industrial Psychology section of the Department of Industry and Commerce. It seems they had recommended a shortening of hours for the members of the Sixth and Fifth Classes in a number of provincial towns, to bring them more on a level with the same class of workers in Mecco itself. He said it was the thin end of the wedge; that they ought not to have reported until experiments had been made with a different diet: he blamed the Eugenics Section, too, for not being able to produce a tougher strain of workers. Reduction of working hours should not be resorted to, he maintained, until every other expedient had been tried: it was so very difficult to increase them afterwards. Besides, in the Strenuous Month, it had been proved over and over again that th
e men could easily stand a longer working day without physical injury.
"And what is the Strenuous Month?" I asked.
"Oh, of course," he said, "you have not studied our industrial system as a factor of military organisation. There is a very good account of it in Mr. Kwang's Triumphs of Meccanian Culture. Briefly it is this. Every year, but not always in the same month, the signal is given for the Strenuous Month to begin. The workmen then work at top speed, and for as many hours a day as the Industrial Psychologists determine, for thirty days consecutively. It is excellent training, and incidentally has a very good effect on the output for the other months of the year. The men are so glad when it is over that, unconsciously, they work better for the rest of the year."
"But I should have thought they would be so fatigued that you would lose as much as you gain, or more perhaps," I said.
"Oh no," he answered; "they are allowed one day's complete rest, which they must spend in bed; their diet is arranged, both during the time and for a month after. They must go to bed for two hours extra every night for the following month. The effect is most beneficial. They like it too, on the whole, for they get paid for all the extra product— that is to say, it is added to their pension fund."
"But I thought the pension fund was so calculated," I said, "that it tallies exactly with what is required for the support of each man from the time he ceases to be able to work."
"Certainly," he replied. "After fifty-five most of our men work an hour a day less every two years, with variations according to their capacity, as tested by the medical examinations."
"Then how do they benefit," I asked, "by the product of the strenuous month, if it is only added to their pension and not paid at the time?"
"If it is added to the pension fund," he replied, "it is obvious that they must benefit."
I did not pursue the matter further. He asked me if I had been to the Annual Medical Exhibition. I said I had not heard of it, and did not suppose I should receive permission to see it, as I was not altogether well qualified to understand it. He said it was most interesting. He was not a medical man himself, of course; but as an officer in the army he had had to get some acquaintance with physiology.
"The medical menagerie gets more interesting every year," he said.
"The medical menagerie!" I exclaimed. "Whatever is that?"
"It is a wonderful collection of animals, not only domestic but wild animals too, upon which experiments have been carried out. There are goats with sheep's legs. There are cows with horses' hearts, and dogs with only hind-legs, and pigs without livers—oh, all sorts of things. The funniest is a pig with a tiger's skin."
"And what is the object of it all?" I said.
"Oh, just a regular part of medical research. The most valuable experiments are those with bacilli, of course; but only the experts can understand these, as a rule."
"But it is not safe to infer that the results of experiments on animals will be applicable to human beings," I said.
"Of course not, without further verification; but the Special Medical Board have ample powers to carry out research."
"What, upon human beings?" I exclaimed.
"People do not always know when they are being experimented upon," he remarked significantly. "Besides, if a man is already suffering from an incurable disease, what does it matter? Of course, we use anaesthetics, wherever possible at least; that goes without saying."
After dinner we drank wine for a little time, seated in little groups after the manner of a custom in some of the colleges in Luniland. Here, instead of being placed with the two gentlemen who had been my neighbours at table, I was one of a group of four, the others being two professors and a high official in the Sociological Department. One of the professors was Secret Councillor Sikofantis-Sauer, an Economist; the other was Church Councillor Muhgubb-Slimey, a Theologian. We talked of indifferent matters for some time until the High Official left us, when the idea occurred to me to try whether the Economist would enlighten me upon the subject of the ultimate destination of the phenomenal production of the Meccanian economic organisation.
I remarked that I had never seen in any country so few signs of discontent as in Meccania, and I asked if this was due to the great wealth that must necessarily be produced by the efficiency of the methods of production. Professor Sikofantis- Sauer, the Economist, said that my question betrayed that I was not acquainted with the Meccanian System of Ethics. I wondered why the Professor of Economics should begin talking of Ethics. He went on, "Social discontent was never really due to lack of wealth. Properly speaking, it has no relation to material wealth at all. This has been proved up to the hilt—if it needed any proof—by our researches in Economic and Social History. In a nutshell the proof is this. What was called poverty in the early nineteenth century would have been considered affluence in, let us say, the fifth or even the tenth century. The whole idea of wealth is subjective. Now anyone knows that, where wealth is allowed to become the main objective of the social activities of the people, the desire for individual wealth is insatiable. The notion that you can ever reach a state of contentment, by increasing the wealth of the people, is one of the greatest fallacies that even the economists of Luniland ever entertained—and that is saying a good deal. Consequently, if we have succeeded in eradicating discontent, it has not been by pursuing the mirage of a popular El Dorado. No, you must replace the insane desire for the gratification of individual indulgence by a conception of a truer kind of wellbeing. If the individual once grasps the fact that in himself, and by himself, he is little better than an arboreal ape, and that all he possesses, all he can possess, is the gift of the State—which gives him nourishment, language, ideas, knowledge; which trains him to use his powers, such as they are— he will assume an entirely different attitude. Our system of education, far more than our system of production, is responsible for the eradication of social and of every other kind of discontent."
"Then I suppose," I said, "the lower classes, as we sometimes call them abroad—your Fifth and Sixth and Seventh Classes, for exampleâÄî never inquire whether they receive what they consider a fair share of the national product?"
Professor Sauer laughed aloud. "Pardon me," he said, "but you remind me of a story I used to hear when I was a boy, of a man who had slept in some cave or den for fifty years, or was it a century, and woke up to find a different world. Such a question belongs to the buried fossils of economic theory. Who can say what is a fair share? You might as well ask whether one musical composition is more just than another."
"Well, perhaps you can tell me this," I said. "Considering the superiority of your methods of production, I should have expected to find a much higher standard of individual wealth, or comfort, or leisure—you know what I mean—among not only the lower classes, but all classes. I cannot help wondering what becomes of all the surplus."
"We have all enough for our needs," he said, "and the requirements of the State are of far more importance than the gratification of the tastes of individuals."
"May I put in a word?" said Professor Slimey the Theologian. "In the modern world, the productive powers of man have outstripped his other powers. It is one of the mysteries of the ways of Providence. The discipline of labour is necessary for the development of the soul, but the devil has sought to seduce mankind by teaching him how to produce more than is good for him, in the hope that he will become corrupted by luxury. In other countries that corruption has already taken place. The strenuous life is the only life consistent with moral health. Under the Divine guidance our ruling classes—I am old-fashioned enough to use that expression, for in the eyes of God there are no First or Second Classes—have preserved the sense of duty; they are a discipline unto themselves. God's blessings have been multiplied unto them, and they have not forgotten the Divine injunctions. We cannot expect that the masses of mankind can discipline themselves, and for them the only safety lies in well-regulated and well-directed labour. There can be no greater curse for a people than i
dleness and luxury. Fortunately, we have been able to preserve them from the evil effects of superabundant wealth."
"I have sometimes wondered," I said, "whether the requirements of the State in regard to what is called National Defence were so great as to account for the surplus product."
"Undoubtedly the demands of the army are very considerable," replied Sauer. "You must remember that we have to protect ourselves against the whole world, so to speak."