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There are many people who are, for various reasons, afraid to discuss the subject during peace time, and prefer to wait for war. There are also some great manufacturers who oppose any such plan because they were seriously interfered with during the war time. Indeed it has been the experience of some of those responsible for the industrial mobilization in the World War to remain the objects of venomous attack begun during the time that the necessities of the nation made it imperative to control activities and profits. Some critics were prominent manufacturers who said: "Tell us what the Government wants, and we will fill the orders; but don't interfere with the sale of the part of our product that the Government does not want to use.' That was unthinkable. President Wilson decreed that fair prices for the Government were fair prices for civilians. I must say, however, that the vast majority of American manufacturers rose to the situation in such a splendid way as to bring the following commendation from Woodrow Wilson: "They turned aside from every private interest of their own and devoted the whole of their trained capacity to the tasks that supplied the sinews of the whole great undertaking. The patriotism, the unselfishness, the thoroughgoing devotion and distinguished capacity that marked their toilsome labors day after day, month after month, have made them fit mates and comrades to the men in the trenches and on the seas.'

There are many men who are afraid that the adoption of this plan by Congress would give an impetus to socialism or communism or sovietism or whatever they may call it, because, they say, 'if you show it can be done in war time, there will be a demand that it be done in peace time.' It cannot be done in peace time. There can be no great undertaking without a strong moving cause. In peace time the

moving cause is personal initiative and payment for services performed. The substitute for that in war time is the common danger.

The War Industries Board was the foremost advocate of price-fixing and distribution, and it had great power in this field; but when the Armistice came it recognized that peace conditions were being restored, and it was the first to change the war-time order of things and to leave to the people themselves the readjustment of their affairs. I am satisfied that it is impossible for the Government to do in peace time what I am advocating, although it becomes absolutely necessary in order to conduct a modern war successfully and to conduct it on a non-profiteering basis.

The application of this plan, besides making the nation a coherent unit in time of war, would impress upon every class in society a sense of its own responsibility in such event. If it were known that this universal responsibility would be enforced, no class— social, financial, or industrial- could fail to understand that, in case of war, it would have to bear its fair share of the burdens involved, and would have to make sacrifices of profit, convenience, and personal liberty correlatively with those made by the soldiers in the field. To this extent the plan would act as a positive deterrent to any hasty recourse to force in an international controversy.

One thing that has definitely come from the war is the necessity of arranging affairs so that a portion of the population shall not be sent to the front to bear all the physical hardships and their consequences while others are left behind to profit by their absence. If applied at the outbreak, the War Industries Board (as it was functioning at the close of the World War) would prevent this, and lessen, if not remove, the social and economic evils that come as the aftermath of war.

NOTES ON THE ENGLISH CHARACTER

BY E. M. FORSTER

First Note. I had better let the cat out of the bag at once and record my opinion that the character of the English is essentially middle-class. There is a sound historical reason for this, for, since the end of the eighteenth century, the middle classes have been the dominant force in our community. They gained wealth by the Industrial Revolution, political power by the Reform Bill of 1832; they are connected with the rise and organization of the British Empire; they are responsible for the literature of the nineteenth century. Solidity, caution, integrity, efficiency. Lack of imagination, hypocrisy. These qualities characterize the middle classes in every country, but in England they are national characteristics also, because only in England have the middle classes been in power for one hundred and fifty years. Napoleon, in his rude way, called us 'a nation of shopkeepers.' We prefer to call ourselves 'a great commercial nation,' it sounds more dignified, but the two phrases

amount to the same. Of course there are other classes: there is an aristocracy, there are the poor. But it is on the middle classes that the eye of the critic rests just as it rests on the poor in Russia and on the aristocracy in Japan. Russia is symbolized by the peasant or by the factory worker; Japan by the samurai; the national figure of England is Mr. Bull with his top hat, his comfortable clothes, his substantial stomach, and his substantial balance at the bank. Saint George may caper on banners and in

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Second Note. Just as the heart of England is the middle classes, so the heart of the middle classes is the publicschool system. This extraordinary institution is local. It does not even exist all over the British Isles. It is unknown in Ireland, almost unknown in Scotland (countries excluded from my survey), and though it may inspire other great institutions - Aligarh, for example, and some of the schools in the United States

United States it remains unique, because it was created by the AngloSaxon middle classes, and can flourish only where they flourish. How perfectly it expresses their characterfar better, for instance, than does the university, into which social and spiritual complexities have already entered. With its boarding-houses, its compulsory games, its system of prefects and fagging, its insistence on good form and on esprit de corps, it produces a type whose weight is out of all proportion to its numbers.

On leaving his school, the boy either sets to work at once goes into the army or into business, or emigrates or else proceeds to the university, and after three or four years there enters some other profession becomes a barrister, doctor, civil servant, schoolmaster, or journalist. (If through

some mishap he does not become a manual worker or an artist.) In all these careers his education, or the absence of it, influences him. Its memories influence him also. Many men look back on their school days as the happiest of their lives. They remember with regret that golden time when life, though hard, was not yet complex; when they all worked together and played together and thought together, so far as they thought at all; when they were taught that school is the world in miniature, and believed that no one can love his country who does not love his school. And they prolong that time as best they can by joining their Old Boys' society; indeed, some of them remain Old Boys and nothing else for the rest of their lives. They attribute all good to the school. They worship it. They quote the remark that 'the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton.' It is nothing to them that the remark is inapplicable historically and was never made by the Duke of Wellington, and that the Duke of Wellington was an Irishman. They go on quoting it because it expresses their sentiments; they feel that if the Duke of Wellington did n't make it he ought to have, and if he was n't an Englishman he ought to have been. And they go forth into a world that is not entirely composed of public-school men or even of AngloSaxons, but of men who are as various as the sands of the sea; into a world of whose richness and subtlety they have no conception. They go forth into it with well-developed bodies, fairly developed minds, and undeveloped hearts. And it is this undeveloped heart that is largely responsible for the difficulties of Englishmen abroad. An undeveloped heart not a cold one. The difference is important, and on it my next note will be based.

For it is not that the Englishman

can't feel it is that he is afraid to feel. He has been taught at his public school that feeling is bad form. He must not express great joy or sorrow, or even open his mouth too wide when he talks his pipe might fall out if he did. He must bottle up his emotions, or let them out only on a very special occasion.

Once upon a time (this is an anecdote) I went for a week's holiday on the Continent with an Indian friend. We both enjoyed ourselves and were sorry when the week was over, but on parting our behavior was absolutely different. He was plunged in despair. He felt that because the holiday was over all happiness was over until the world ended. He could not express his sorrow too much. But in me the Englishman came out strong. I reflected that we should meet again in a month or two, and could write in the interval if we had anything to say; and under these circumstances I could not see what there was to make a fuss about. It was n't as if we were parting forever or dying. 'Buck up,' I said, 'do buck up.' He refused to buck up, and I left him plunged in gloom.

The conclusion of the anecdote is even more instructive. For when we met the next month our conversation threw a good deal of light on the English character. I began by scolding my friend. I told him that he had been wrong to feel and display so much emotion upon so slight an occasion; that it was inappropriate. The word 'inappropriate' roused him to fury. 'What?' he cried. 'Do you measure out your emotions as if they were potatoes?' I did not like the simile of the potatoes, but after a moment's reflection I said, 'Yes, I do; and what's more, I think I ought to. A small occasion demands a little emotion, just as a large occasion demands a great one. I would like my emotions to be

appropriate. This may be measuring them like potatoes, but it is better than slopping them about like water from a pail, which is what you did.' He did not like the simile of the pail. 'If those are your opinions, they part us forever,' he cried, and left the room. Returning immediately, he added: "No - but your whole attitude toward emotion is wrong. Emotion has nothing to do with appropriateness. It matters only that it shall be sincere. I happened to feel deeply. I showed it. It does n't matter whether I ought to have felt deeply or not.'

This remark impressed me very much. Yet I could not agree with it, and said that I valued emotion as much as he did, but used it differently; if I poured it out on small occasions I was afraid of having none left for the great ones, and of being bankrupt at the crises of life. Note the word 'bankrupt.' I spoke as a member of a prudent middle-class nation, always anxious to meet my liabilities. But my friend spoke as an Oriental, and the Oriental has behind him a tradition, not of middle-class prudence, but of kingly munificence and splendor. He feels his resources are endless, just as John Bull feels his are finite. As regards material resources, the Oriental is clearly unwise. Money is n't endless. If we spend or give away all the money we have, we have n't any more, and must take the consequences, which are frequently unpleasant. But, as regards the resources of the spirit, he may be right. The emotions may be endless. The more we express them, the more we may have to express.

True love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away,

says Shelley. Shelley, at all events, believes that the wealth of the spirit is endless; that we may express it copiously, passionately, and always;

and that we can never feel sorrow or joy too acutely.

In the above anecdote, I have figured as a typical Englishman. I will now descend from that dizzy and somewhat unfamiliar height, and return to my business of note-taking. A note on the slowness of the English character. The Englishman appears to be cold and unemotional because he is really slow. When an event happens, he may understand it quickly enough with his mind, but he takes quite a while to feel it. Once upon a time a coach, containing some Englishmen and some Frenchmen, was driving over the Alps. The horses ran away, and as they were dashing across a bridge the coach caught on the stonework, tottered, and nearly fell into the ravine below. The Frenchmen were frantic with terror: they screamed and gesticulated and flung themselves about, as Frenchmen would. The Englishmen sat quite calm. An hour later the coach drew up at an inn to change horses, and by that time the situations were exactly reversed. The Frenchmen had forgotten all about the danger, and were chattering gayly; the Englishmen had just begun to feel it, and one had a nervous breakdown and was obliged to go to bed. We have here a clear physical difference between the two races a difference that goes deep into character. The Frenchmen responded at once; the Englishmen responded in time. They were slow and they were also practical. Their instinct forbade them to throw themselves about in the coach, because it was more likely to tip over if they did. They had this extraordinary appreciation of fact that we shall notice again and again. When a disaster comes, the English instinct is to do what can be done first, and to postpone the feeling as long as possible. Hence they are splendid at emergencies. No doubt they are brave, no one will deny

that, - but bravery is partly an affair of the nerves, and the English nervous system is well equipped for meeting a physical emergency. It acts promptly and feels slowly. Such a combination is fruitful, and anyone who possesses it has gone a long way toward being brave. And when the action is over, then the Englishman can feel.

There is one more consideration a most important one. If the English nature is cold, how is it that it has produced a great literature and a literature that is particularly great in poetry? Judged by its prose, English literature would not stand in the first rank. It is its poetry that raises it to the level of Greek, Persian, or French. And yet the English are supposed to be so unpoetical. How is this? The nation that produced the Elizabethan drama and the Lake Poets cannot be a cold, unpoetical nation. We can't get fire out of ice. Since literature always rests upon national character, there must be in the English nature hidden springs of fire to produce the fire we see. The warm sympathy, the romance, the imagination, that we look for in Englishmen whom we meet, and too often vainly look for, must exist in the nation as a whole, or we could not have this outburst of national song. An undeveloped heart - not a cold one.

The trouble is that the English nature is not at all easy to understand. It has a great air of simplicity, it advertises itself as simple, but the more we consider it, the greater the problems we shall encounter. People talk of the mysterious East, but the West also is mysterious. It has depths that do not reveal themselves at the first gaze. We know what the sea looks like from a distance: it is of one, color, and level, and obviously cannot contain such creatures as fish. But if we look into the sea over the edge of a boat, we see a dozen colors, and depth below depth,

VOL. 137-NO. 1

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and fish swimming in them. That sea is the English character- apparently imperturbable and even. The depths and the colors are the English romanticism and the English sensitiveness we do not expect to find such things, but they exist. And to continue my metaphor the fish are the English emotions, which are always trying to get up to the surface, but don't quite know how. For the most part we see them moving far below, distorted and obscure. Now and then they succeed and we exclaim, 'Why the Englishman has emotions! He actually can feel!' And occasionally we see that beautiful creature the flying fish, which rises out of the water altogether into the air and the sunlight. English literature is a flying fish. It is a sample of the life that goes on day after day beneath the surface; it is a proof that beauty and emotion exist in the salt, inhospitable

sea.

And now let's get back to terra firma. The Englishman's attitude toward criticism will give us another starting-point. He is not annoyed by criticism. He listens or not as the case may be, smiles and passes on, saying, 'Oh, the fellow's jealous'; 'Oh, I'm used to Bernard Shaw; monkey tricks don't hurt me.' It never occurs to him that the fellow may be accurate as well as jealous, and that he might do well to take the criticism to heart and profit by it. It never strikes him- except as a form of words that he is capable of improvement; his self-complacency is abysmal. Other nations, both Oriental and European, have an uneasy feeling that they are not quite perfect. In consequence they resent criticism. It hurts them; and their snappy answers often mask a determination to improve themselves. Not so the Englishman. He has no uneasy feeling. Let the critics bark. And the 'tolerant humorous attitude' with which he

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