THE "STRONG CONCEIT OF CLEVERNESS."
AN interesting, if rather elusive, document came to light in the columns of the Daily Express of Saturday last. It is described as a "private and confidential" circular, addressed to the members of the Fabian Society, and its main argument is one which, in certain circumstances, appeals to all. What is wanted is cash down. But it would scarcely be Fabian to come to the point with such uncomfortable abruptness by stating that offhand. The violence of the monosyllables would be too bellicose. Instead, an alluring little essay is offered the reader on the general virtues of Fabianism. It does its work, to begin with, you are informed, unostentatiously. "Much of this work takes, effect in other quarters, apparently quite spontaneously. We should spoil it if we advertised the Society's connection with it." Fabianism, again, acts "as the ghost' does to the sculptor ; it supplies the information and suggests the procedure, but it does not appear when the matter reaches the newspaper stage." This is a little more difficult; the idea of a. spectre coaching M. Rodin in the statistics of the Fiscal question, and vanish- ing with a ghastly groan at the sight of a column of print, is most puzzling. Nor is that the only mystery. The " ghost " vanishes, but he does not stop working; ,he is always at it. He can get practically anything into the papers, though you would never suspect it was he. There was a Housing Con- ference some years ago, for instance, and there were long reports of its meetings in the Press. Who would have guessed that "all this was the work of the Fabian Society, paid for by their subscriptions" ? The upshot is that the Society needs expansion, that "the first debt to discharge is an increase in the salary of the Society's secretary," and the request is made that "the amount of members' subscriptions should be raised to at least 22,000 a year."
All this is interesting, and the last part quite practical, for no Society can indulge in unremitting political propaganda with only the ghost of a purse. But it would not be worth while toset out at such length the tenor of a "private and confidential" document if there were not involved a more general, and perhaps a more important, question than the immediate problem before the Fabian Society. With the Society's politics, indeed, we have here very little to do. The circular quoted may, for all that an outsider can tell, be intended to suggest something quite different from what it appears to suggest ; the Society may not want any money after all, and the circular may be written in the language; of a code. If so, that would still leave the main question to be anawered,—Is it worth while ? Is it a good plan ? Does secrecy of this kind pay ? Is it good policy to be always hinting that there are mysterious agencies at work, plotting this and managing that, putting peas under thimbles and keeping aces up the sleeve ? Do you really get the best out of the world by trying to be too clever by half? Or.was not the old-fashioned mother, in the old-fashioned nursery poem, really a very wise woman when she was "willing to repress" the "strong conceit of cleverness" in her small daughter? The founders of the Fabian Society must be presumed to have studied the question thoroughly, and. to have decided other- wise. They would seem to hold that it is better to creep down mysterious bypathe in list slippers than to stamp noisily along the open road, and they are not, of course, the only persons in the world who believe, or begin by believing, in that policy. Every one who has had any considerable experience of a life of action has met men who, consciously or unconsciously, are always choosing the more secret of the alternatives offered them. They believe not merely in keeping their own counsel, but in persuading others that their counsel is something widely different. They must not merely rival or surpass their opponents ; they must perplex them. The room they wish to reach may lie at the top of the front staircase ; but it is better to see whether there is not a backstairs way to it. The horses they want to take to the water will drink if only they are driven to the pond by a crooked road. The longer the lane the better, provided it has a sufficient number of turnings. The mole and the bird both cross the same field, but they prefer to cross with the mole, because he works underground. They forget that every one above ground can see which way the mole is working.
They make throughout one capital mistake. They lose sight of the cardinal fact that to gain any real or lasting success with men who could make success valuable nothing but absolute honesty will do. Cleverness will carry them a certain distance, but there is a point beyond which the cleverest, if he has no finer quality, will never lead others; more than that, for when he has stuck at that point for a time he will find that he must go back, or his followers will leave him. A little later, and he will be following them; but it will be off the field, or they will be looking for another leader. Not that he would be wrong if he claimed that a certain ability of pretence, or dissimulation, is a necessary accomplishment in a great leader. But a man may be able to dissimulate and yet get his great success by absolutely straightforward state- ment of his policy and his purpose. A general may be master of a hundred ruses, and yet win his crowning victory by doing precisely what his enemy believed he was going to do. Bacon has summed up the possibilities of successful dis- simulation in a sentence "Certainly the ablest men that ever were have all had an openness and frankness of dealing ; and a name of certainty and veracity; but then they were like horses well managed ; for tkey could tell passing well when to stop or turn; and at such times when they thought the case indeed required dissimulation, if then they used it, it came to pass that the former opinion spread abroad of their good faith and clearness of dealing made them almost invisible." But no leader ever succeeded by perpetual dissimulation. For, above all, the man who tries to lead, or to drive, by perpetually pre- tending that he is aiming at something which he does not in reality wish to obtain loses the greatest thing which he can get from his fellow-creatures. He will never gain their confi- dence; as for their affection, he may be admired, but he can never be loved. That was a truth which Lincoln wanted General Hooker to realise when he gave him the command of the Army of the Potomac, but warned him that the soldiers had lost confidence in their general. "Neither you," he wrote, "nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it." Men Iva' only follow a leader whom they dislike as long as be is uninterrupted in his successes. When his luck turns he has nothing left to lean upon. And that, surely,. cannot be a very inspiring thought for any man who has deliberately tried to attain his ends by perpetual dissimulation, continual jugglery, unending deception of others, including his followers if he thinks them too simple to be let into the secrets of the game,—that be never gains a friend. He makes enemy after enemy, at all events among lesser men, but he never by honest kindliness, perhaps by an honest mistake, gains the affection of one man for the distrust of ten. It does not matter to a leader whether he is "well hated" if he is also well loved ; but it is a dismal business to gain the first distinction and miss the second.
In short, when the "strong conceit of cleverness" is the only asset .of a leader or a party, or an ordinary private indi- vidual, one consequence is bound to follow. The end will be ccrntempt. That may not be realised for a long time, for success can follow astuteness a certain distance, and success is always popular. But the end never varies. The world has not yet approved the proverb: "Great is craft, and it shall prevail" The signs of weakness are too easily read. "It is the weaker sort of politics that are the great dissemblers," wrote Bacon, and great causes can afford to ask for the truth.
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