As I leave this place and take the railway into Germany
the news comes thicker and thicker up the streets
that Southern France is in a flame, and that there
perhaps will be fought out finally the awful modern
battle of the rich and poor. And as I pass into
quieter places for the last sign of France on the
sky-line, I see the Lion of Belfort stand at bay,
the last sight of that great people which has never
been at peace.
Humanity: an Interlude
Except for some fine works of art, which seem to be
there by accident, the City of Brussels is like a
bad Paris, a Paris with everything noble cut out,
and everything nasty left in. No one can understand
Paris and its history who does not understand that
its fierceness is the balance and justification of
its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure;
but it may also very specially be called a city of
pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of
thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others,
but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They
are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion;
they are even martyrs for immorality. For the
indecency of many of their books and papers is not
of the sort which charms and seduces, but of the sort
that horrifies and hurts; they are torturing themselves.
They lash their own patriotism into life with the
same whips which most men use to lash foreigners to
silence. The enemies of France can never give
an account of her infamy or decay which does not seem
insipid and even polite compared with the things which
the Nationalists of France say about their own nation.
They taunt and torment themselves; sometimes they
even deliberately oppress themselves. Thus, when
the mob of Paris could make a Government to please
itself, it made a sort of sublime tyranny to order
itself about. The spirit is the same from the
Crusades or St. Bartholomew to the apotheosis of Zola.
The old religionists tortured men physically for a
moral truth. The new realists torture men morally
for a physical truth.
Now Brussels is Paris without this constant purification
of pain. Its indecencies are not regrettable
incidents in an everlasting revolution. It has
none of the things which make good Frenchmen love
Paris; it has only the things which make unspeakable
Englishmen love it. It has the part which is
cosmopolitan— and narrows; not the part
which is Parisian—and universal. You
can find there (as commonly happens in modern centres)
the worst things of all nations—the daily
Mail from England, the cheap philosophies from
Germany, the loose novels of France, and the drinks
of America. But there is no English broad fun,
no German kindly ceremony, no American exhilaration,
and, above all, no French tradition of fighting for
an idea. Though all the boulevards look like
Parisian boulevards, though all the shops look like
Parisian shops, you cannot look at them steadily for
two minutes without feeling the full distance between,
let us say, King Leopold and fighters like Clemenceau
and Deroulede.
