But the sea would not stop for me any more than for
Canute; and as for the German band, that would not
stop for anybody.
Some Policemen and a Moral
The other day I was nearly arrested by two excited
policemen in a wood in Yorkshire. I was on a
holiday, and was engaged in that rich and intricate
mass of pleasures, duties, and discoveries which for
the keeping off of the profane, we disguise by the
exoteric name of Nothing. At the moment in question
I was throwing a big Swedish knife at a tree, practising
(alas, without success) that useful trick of knife-throwing
by which men murder each other in Stevenson’s
romances.
Suddenly the forest was full of two policemen; there
was something about their appearance in and relation
to the greenwood that reminded me, I know not how,
of some happy Elizabethan comedy. They asked
what the knife was, who I was, why I was throwing it,
what my address was, trade, religion, opinions on the
Japanese war, name of favourite cat, and so on.
They also said I was damaging the tree; which was,
I am sorry to say, not true, because I could not hit
it. The peculiar philosophical importance, however,
of the incident was this. After some half-hour’s
animated conversation, the exhibition of an envelope,
an unfinished poem, which was read with great care,
and, I trust, with some profit, and one or two other
subtle detective strokes, the elder of the two knights
became convinced that I really was what I professed
to be, that I was a journalist, that I was on the daily
news (this was the real stroke; they were shaken
with a terror common to all tyrants), that I lived
in a particular place as stated, and that I was stopping
with particular people in Yorkshire, who happened
to be wealthy and well-known in the neighbourhood.
In fact the leading constable became so genial and
complimentary at last that he ended up by representing
himself as a reader of my work. And when that
was said, everything was settled. They acquitted
me and let me pass.
“But,” I said, “what of this mangled
tree? It was to the rescue of that Dryad, tethered
to the earth, that you rushed like knight-errants.
You, the higher humanitarians, are not deceived by
the seeming stillness of the green things, a stillness
like the stillness of the cataract, a headlong and
crashing silence. You know that a tree is but
a creature tied to the ground by one leg. You
will not let assassins with their Swedish daggers shed
the green blood of such a being. But if so,
why am I not in custody; where are my gyves?
Produce, from some portion of your persons, my mouldy
straw and my grated window. The facts of which
I have just convinced you, that my name is Chesterton,
that I am a journalist, that I am living with the
well-known and philanthropic Mr. Blank of Ilkley,
cannot have anything to do with the question of whether
I have been guilty of cruelty to vegetables.
