Essay No. 4
Sentimental England
ARE WE BECOMING DEGENERATE
THROUGH LACK OF DISCIPLINE?
by
Raymond Blathwayt
(Reprinted by permission of " Black and White.")
THAT England is rapidly developing a capacity for emotional sentimentality is obvious to the most casual observer, and that such a characteristic is a sign of sure and lamentable deterioration in every aspect of her national life is equally obvious and undeniable. Sentimentality is the inevitable concomitant of mob law. He who declared that the voice of the people was the voice of God was not nearly so correct in his vision of life as the orator who, when his speech was broken in upon by the applause of the multitude, turned to a friend with the caustic remark : "Have I said anything wrong, then ? "
And the causes of this are not far to seek. When you are confronted by an individual swayed by sentiment rather than by reason, whose actions are controlled by heart rather than head, who has abandoned the habit or the desire to "commune with his own heart and to be still," who can endure neither
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solitude nor suffering, and whose attitude towards life generally is always that of frivolity, then you are confronted by the hopelessly degenerate, and you can look for nothing, so far as such a person is concerned, but ultimate and inevitable disaster.
And it is the same with a nation. And the least thoughtless and the most hopelessly optimistic must acknowledge that to a great extent the reason why the England of to-day differs so sadly from the England of old is that she is incapable of taking the stern, the sober, the common-sense view of life which was her distinguishing characteristic when Elizabeth and Oliver Cromwell guided her destinies, and even when Queen Victoria ascended the throne some seventy years ago.
And this change of character runs through all classes of society. No one, for instance, would pretend for a moment that the "Pleasant Sunday Afternoon " Nonconformist of to-day has any real quality in common with the Ironsides of Cromwell crashing on to victory at Naseby, or that, let us say, Miss Victoria Cross, whose books are so eagerly devoured by a large section of the public, is a worthy successor of John Locke, who moulded popular thought two hundred and fifty years ago.
The backbone of steel has been removed from the national body, and one of putty has been placed in its stead, to the national detriment. In every respect the mind of the people and its outlook on life has
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been sadly emasculated and enfeebled from what it once was.
Take, for instance, the views of the middle and lower classes upon the corporal punishment of their children. In the old days the wisdom of Solomon's oft-quoted adage was universally recognised, and the unspared rod resulted in the unspoiled child, greatly to the benefit of the whole of the nation's life and vigour. To-day the contemptible sentimentality of a certain degenerate section of the English people banishes the rod from the schoolroom and the nursery, and, in consequence, floods the country with a band of undesirable hooligans on the one hand and contemptibly softened individuals on the other. They will not realise that a boy who cannot take a well-deserved thrashing without crying out about it is not worth calling a boy at all. And yet the finest men have resulted from the old system. To a certain extent that tradition holds good still amongst the upper classes; but so far as the middle and lower classes are concerned, hopeless degeneration in this respect, at all events, has definitely set in. And it is degeneration indeed ! An emasculated and degenerate nation inevitably takes a sentimental and futile view of life, and a view that is preeminently short-sighted and unscientific.
It regards the personal element as of greater consequence than the principles which are fundamental, and which there is no evading, without the certainty
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of loss to human character and the righteous punishment which always befalls those who disregard the primary principles of life. And in no way is the degeneracy of modern England so remarkably evidenced as in its views upon the punishment of the wrong-doer, who must invariably be let down as lightly as possible.
You cannot imagine the Humanitarian Society flourishing in the days of Drake, of Marlborough, of Nelson, or of Wellington.
Try and picture to yourself a great, brutal, murdering hooligan, a man who beats the life out of some unoffending passer-by, being haled before Oliver Cromwell, and the same person appearing with a jaunty smile before the Humanitarian Society.
It is particularly in its views upon punishment that the sentimental England of to-day is so lamentably degenerate.
The whole national outlook of modern England is poisoned by this taint of false sentiment. There is a constant evasion of anything that makes for the hardness of life. The aim of each individual is for pleasure at the expense of duty.
The German or the Japanese or the Spanish clerk, for instance, in a house of business seeks the perfection of himself in his special line of work. The English clerk, as any employer in the City will tell you to-day, is concerned only with the arrival of the hour which sets him free from a desk whereat he has
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performed as briefly and inefficiently as possible his daily and, to him, distasteful task.
The people aim only at pleasure, ignoring the fact, pointed out years ago by John Stuart Mill, that human well-being can only come of the internal culture of the individual.
The result of present-day aims and methods is national shallowness of character. You cannot picture to yourself to-day the existence in any large quantities of the quietists of the Middle Ages, nor can you look for the splendid spirituality of the Puritans of the seventeenth century, who may have been uncultured, but certainly were never weakly sentimental.
Your modern Englishman shrinks from discipline. He regards it as an encroachment upon the liberty of the individual, instead of looking upon it as a means by which he attains the highest freedom.
And discipline is the antithesis of sentimentality.
---oOo---
