either
possessed, into the purely destructive and wasteful business of war.
And—I have to tell you these things even if you do not believe
them, because they are vital to my story—there was not a man alive
who could have told you of any real permanent benefit, of anything
whatever to counterbalance the obvious waste and evil, that would
result from a war between England and Germany, whether England
shattered Germany or was smashed and overwhelmed, or whatever the
end might be.
The thing was, in fact, an enormous irrational obsession, it was,
in the microcosm of our nation, curiously parallel to the egotistical
wrath and jealousy that swayed my individual microcosm. It measured
the excess of common emotion over the common intelligence, the
legacy of inordinate passion we have received from the brute from
which we came. Just as I had become the slave of my own surprise and
anger and went hither and thither with a loaded revolver, seeking
and intending vague fluctuating crimes, so these two nations went
about the earth, hot eared and muddle headed, with loaded navies
and armies terribly ready at hand. Only there was not even a Nettie
to justify their stupidity. There was nothing but quiet imaginary
thwarting on either side.
And the press was the chief instrument that kept these two huge
multitudes of people directed against one another.
The press—those newspapers that are now so strange to us—like
the "Empires," the "Nations," the Trusts, and all the other great
monstrous shapes of that extraordinary time—was in the nature
of an unanticipated accident. It had happened, as weeds happen in
abandoned gardens, just as all our world has happened,—because
there was no clear Will in the world to bring about anything better.
Towards the end this "press" was almost entirely under the direction
of youngish men of that eager, rather unintelligent type, that
is never able to detect itself aimless, that pursues nothing with
incredible pride and zeal, and if you would really understand this
mad era the comet brought to an end, you must keep in mind that every
phase in the production of these queer old things was pervaded by
a strong aimless energy and happened in a concentrated rush.
Let me describe to you, very briefly, a newspaper day.
Figure first, then, a hastily erected and still more hastily
designed building in a dirty, paper-littered back street of old
London, and a number of shabbily dressed men coming and going in
this with projectile swiftness, and within this factory companies
of printers, tensely active with nimble fingers—they were always
speeding up the printers—ply their type-setting machines, and cast
and arrange masses of metal in a sort of kitchen inferno, above
which, in a beehive of little brightly lit rooms, disheveled men
sit and scribble. There is a throbbing of telephones and a clicking
of telegraph needles, a rushing of messengers, a running to and fro
of heated men, clutching proofs and copy. Then begins a clatter
roar of machinery catching the infection, going faster and faster,
and whizzing and banging,—engineers, who have never had time to
wash since their birth, flying about with oil-cans, while paper
runs off its rolls with a shudder of haste. The proprietor you
must suppose arriving explosively on a swift motor-car, leaping
out before the thing is at a standstill, with letters and documents
clutched in his hand, rushing in, resolute to "hustle," getting
wonderfully in everybody's way. At the sight of him even the messenger
boys who are waiting, get up and scamper to and fro. Sprinkle your
vision with collisions, curses, incoherencies. You imagine all the
parts of this complex lunatic machine working hysterically toward
a crescendo of haste and excitement as the night wears on. At last
the only things that seem to travel slowly in all those tearing
vibrating premises are the hands of the clock.
Slowly things draw on toward publication, the consummation of all
those stresses. Then in the
possessed, into the purely destructive and wasteful business of war.
And—I have to tell you these things even if you do not believe
them, because they are vital to my story—there was not a man alive
who could have told you of any real permanent benefit, of anything
whatever to counterbalance the obvious waste and evil, that would
result from a war between England and Germany, whether England
shattered Germany or was smashed and overwhelmed, or whatever the
end might be.
The thing was, in fact, an enormous irrational obsession, it was,
in the microcosm of our nation, curiously parallel to the egotistical
wrath and jealousy that swayed my individual microcosm. It measured
the excess of common emotion over the common intelligence, the
legacy of inordinate passion we have received from the brute from
which we came. Just as I had become the slave of my own surprise and
anger and went hither and thither with a loaded revolver, seeking
and intending vague fluctuating crimes, so these two nations went
about the earth, hot eared and muddle headed, with loaded navies
and armies terribly ready at hand. Only there was not even a Nettie
to justify their stupidity. There was nothing but quiet imaginary
thwarting on either side.
And the press was the chief instrument that kept these two huge
multitudes of people directed against one another.
The press—those newspapers that are now so strange to us—like
the "Empires," the "Nations," the Trusts, and all the other great
monstrous shapes of that extraordinary time—was in the nature
of an unanticipated accident. It had happened, as weeds happen in
abandoned gardens, just as all our world has happened,—because
there was no clear Will in the world to bring about anything better.
Towards the end this "press" was almost entirely under the direction
of youngish men of that eager, rather unintelligent type, that
is never able to detect itself aimless, that pursues nothing with
incredible pride and zeal, and if you would really understand this
mad era the comet brought to an end, you must keep in mind that every
phase in the production of these queer old things was pervaded by
a strong aimless energy and happened in a concentrated rush.
Let me describe to you, very briefly, a newspaper day.
Figure first, then, a hastily erected and still more hastily
designed building in a dirty, paper-littered back street of old
London, and a number of shabbily dressed men coming and going in
this with projectile swiftness, and within this factory companies
of printers, tensely active with nimble fingers—they were always
speeding up the printers—ply their type-setting machines, and cast
and arrange masses of metal in a sort of kitchen inferno, above
which, in a beehive of little brightly lit rooms, disheveled men
sit and scribble. There is a throbbing of telephones and a clicking
of telegraph needles, a rushing of messengers, a running to and fro
of heated men, clutching proofs and copy. Then begins a clatter
roar of machinery catching the infection, going faster and faster,
and whizzing and banging,—engineers, who have never had time to
wash since their birth, flying about with oil-cans, while paper
runs off its rolls with a shudder of haste. The proprietor you
must suppose arriving explosively on a swift motor-car, leaping
out before the thing is at a standstill, with letters and documents
clutched in his hand, rushing in, resolute to "hustle," getting
wonderfully in everybody's way. At the sight of him even the messenger
boys who are waiting, get up and scamper to and fro. Sprinkle your
vision with collisions, curses, incoherencies. You imagine all the
parts of this complex lunatic machine working hysterically toward
a crescendo of haste and excitement as the night wears on. At last
the only things that seem to travel slowly in all those tearing
vibrating premises are the hands of the clock.
Slowly things draw on toward publication, the consummation of all
those stresses. Then in the
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