MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
IT is merciful that human beings should be such small receptacles that they cannot absorb more than they can contain : once they have been filled to the brim with sensation, the surplus overflows and runs to waste. The hedonist ceases to enjoy his scents and cushions, even as there occur long periods in the lives of poets and artists when words and colours seem as dull as spoons. The melancholy that so often shadows the years of adolescence, producing what I remember to have been real agonies of Weltschmerz, is due to the fact that excitement gushes in from too powerful a tap and spills from the sontainer with a splash of wastage.
" Ahi, fu una nota del poema eterno Quel ch'io sentiva e picciol verso or 6."
Such are the depressing experiences of youth : in later years we acquire the protective habit of turning the tap but a quarter of the way, allowing the water to trickle gently into our small bowls. This nil admirari approach to life is unadVenturous, but enables us to acquire a certain placidity and to welcome with surprised gratitude the moments, and they are not infrequent, when the cup of pleasure is filled quite quietly to the brim. Conversely it is by some beneficent dispensation that the pains - of life are also subject to the law of diminishing returns. We are numbed by tragedy, and even prolonged suffering is rendered less intolerable by the slow processes of habituation. When we read of- the horrible ordeals to which men and women have been subjected we are astonished that the human character, the actual nervous system with which we are endowed, can possibly survive such tensity without screams of panic or an escape into the dim world of insanity. Yet we know that, when the Ottomans were in Rumeli Hissar, men were still laying odds on the chariot races of the Hippodrome and that in the caverns of the Conciergie they danced „minuets by rush-light.
* * * * I have observed that my own generation, which has suffered so much fear and disappointment in the first half of the twentieth century, has been able to create for itself many anodynes against despair. Our reason tells us that we have not surmounted the perils of the past and that the future looms impending and imponderable, with even greater dangers to come. We can recall the time when Great Britain was still the greatest Power in the world, when she still ruled a vast empire with the tacit consent of subject millions, when she was still the inviolate island of the sage and free. We can recall the time when we still cherished the illusions of progress, believ- ing, for instance, that man had reached a stage of development when it would be impossible to revert to barbarism and when such mediaeval practices as torture, delation, massacre or State lying had become unrepeatable archaisms. Yet we 'have wit- nessed the disproval of all these axioms, and the uncertainty that now surrounds us is such as to suggest that wild seas are the lot of man on earth and that the calm of the nineteenth century was no more than an accidental lagoon. Yet we con- tinue to enjoy the sunshine and to sip our cocktails without being haunted continually by the spectre of-hissing mushrooms of steam rising from our industrial cities or guided missiles streaming like electric hares across our coasts. The cup of apprehension has been filled to its capacity and brims over. For this anaesthesia we should be grateful : it is not a question of courage so much as a refusal to think. Were it not for this refusal, we should become unable to work, or love, or live.
* * * * The cup of compassion also, as I have noticed in myself and others, is a small tumbler, not deeper than a medicine-' glass, which quickly spills. Our fathers, were driven to paroxysms of pity or indignation when a few luckless people were murdered at Kustendil or Byelostock, or when the natives of the Congo were subjected to brutal treatment : today we accept, with only a sigh of regret, that Hitler should have liquidated his millions or Stalin relegated whole populations to abandonment and starvation in the Arctic wastes. I fear we must accept the fact that our capacity for compassion is a limited capacity ‘. but at least we can refrain from making excuses for our deficiency. I have no patience with those who comfort themselves with the fallacy that such things as Belsen, Ausschwitz or Katyn never really happened, or that they are atrocities invented solely for purposes of propaganda. Our supply of pity may be limited, but at least we can preserve our medicine-glass undiluted by false sedatives. There is the other form of evasion or excuse, by which we seek to argue that these things have always happened in an angry world, that they are the necessary defects of a period of violent transition, and that in the sixteenth century we also were guilty of similar brutali- ties. To adopt the attitude of relativity towards such outrages is to lose control of the conscience : it may be true (although I doubt it) that what seem crimes to one generation appear essential expedients to the next : but the fact remains, as I have often preached, that there do remain certain absolutes that are immutable. Cruelty is evil, always, everywhere : untruthfulness is evil, always, everywhere. If without prevari- cation we cling to these absolutes, then we need not worry if the cup of our compassion has overflowed.
* • • I have been constrained to make these trite and somewhat sententious remarks by having read this week a typewritten record of the experiences of a German friend of mine who was caught in the Mark of Brandenburg by the flood of the Russian invasion. Her husband, who had held many high positions in the German foreign service, was dismissed by Hitler on the merited suspicion of being hostile to the Nazi system. They had retired to the small country estate which they possessed to the east of Berlin. I have heard other stories of the violence and licentiousness of the Russian invaders, and_we have come to take these tales of rape and looting almost for granted. What is so striking about my friend's record is her description of the period that ensued after the first outburst of debauchery had been brought under comparative control. The Russian authorities adopted towards them a cold, calculated, doc- trinaire cat-and-mouse policy, which in its way was more horrible than the initial orgy. They were subjected to con- stant, seemingly inconsequent and unrelated, domicilavy visits, carried out, now by the local military authorities, now by the local' secret police. Their visitors would often be polite; with an ingratiating smile they would try to push into their pockets some valuable piece of Meissen china, and if it proved too big for their tight uniforms they would toss it out of the window, where it smashed upon the cobbles of the courtyard below. This senseless, irritating, ignorant and seemingly uncoordinated cruelty proved even more exacting than the wildness of the first few weeks. In the end, without explanation, her husband was driven off into the night and never seen again.
* * * * - This record was all the more disturbing since it was written objectively, without either self-pity or vindictiveness. It is embarrassing to be confronted by someone whom one has known well in the days of past security, after having read her record of all that she has endured. It seems so superficial to continue, as in the old days, to discuss life and letters in the presence of such an appalling catastrophe. Pity, I knew, would only wound her dignity : indignation seemed as helpless as a gull with a shattered wing : the only thing to do was to resume the note of former friendship as if it had been inter- rupted only by a distant journey, as if all these atrocities had not really occurred. By this means only could one convey the feeling that horror was impermanent and that our common civilisation had not lost entirely its soothing magic. Yet how small, how shallow and how weak do we seem to ourselves when a world tragedy confronts us in intimate human form. We wince at our own smugness.
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