MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
THIS perfect summer, which, from the middle of July until the end of August, has given us a succession of hot days and cloud- less nights, will to the elderly recall that other un-English summer of 1911. It was the year in which King George V was crowned ; and those who had grown fat and old during the lush decade of the Edwardian interlude had resigned themselves to what Sir Max Beerbohm had predicted would be "a sweeter, simpler reign." This prediction was not verified. Scarcely a week after the coronation in Westminster Abbey the German Ambassador, Count Metternich, came down to the Foreign Office and announced "in a manner which was extremely nervous and constrained" that his Government had sent the warship ' Panther ' to the Moroccan port of Agadir. To those who are interested in the causes of war in general, and in the causes of the 1914 war in particular, there is no study more repaying than that of what was known at the time as "the Panther's spring." It provides an almost perfect example of the danger of impulse and of the cumulative effect of provocation. It was an illustration of Holstein's " Geiseltheorie," the theory that it is a lucrative diplomatic manoeuvre suddenly to seize some pledge or " Faustpfand" and only to surrender it in return for compensation. The British public, who only a few days before had welcomed William II with amity and even admiration, were shocked by this dramatic challenge to the basis of the Entente. It was generally known that the Germans were not seeking to oust the French from Morocco but only to force them by thig menace to surrender large sections of the French Congo. And as a result Mr. Lloyd George on July 21st made his speech at the Mansion House in which he stated that "peace at such a price would be intolerable for a great country like ours to endure." It is by the accumulation of such un- necessary gestures and affronts that-wars are-caused. And through- out that parched August of 191 the storm-clouds of Germany and Ireland lowered on the horizon.
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When I look back across the years to those hot weeks of 1911 I am confirmed in my suspicion that the British people in those days, and especially the young British people, did not know how to live. Instead of drinking in the sunshine with bared throats and forearms, all but the less manly among them persisted in wearing starched Piccadilly collars, tightly knotted ties and cloth jackets. In London they would pant along the heated pavement wearing bowler hats upon their heads. In the country they wculd use those hard straw hats, which were known as " boaters " in England and as "earwtiers" in France. No headgear devised by man, not even the top-hat, has ever been so ill-designed. It gave but little shade to the eyes, it was an ungainly object either to carry, or pack or to put aside, and if splashed with water (as all boaters are liable to be splashed) it became sticky to the touch. Upon the most immaculate brow it left a hard red line suggestive of herpes. It was a horrible, corrosive hat and we were glad indeed when it was replaced by the ,panama and later by the trilby. Rumours had reached us in those days that in Sweden, home of natural hygiene, the young men and women would expose their necks and bodies to the sun. The younger generation were attracted by such indecency ; the older generation were Appalled. And then quite suddenly we all became ray-con- scious and the Lido lizards began to bask. They have gone on basking ever since.
* * * * Whatever may be the hygienic value of such exposure, I do not feel that aesthetic considerations should be wholly disregarded. The human form is not in every circumstance divine, and I should not recommend elderly men, or women who are far from slim, to indulge too overtly in shorts. The Greeks were more sensitive in such matters than we are, and although their young men and women would run races under the olive trees garlanded with briony and heartsease and their naked limbs sleek with oil, the older gentlemen
and ladies did not discard their clothes. Even Homer observed that, although modesty should not be affronted by the spectacle of youthful nakedness, it was a shameful thing to witness nakedness in the old ; and the word he used for " nakedness " was stark indeed. I have noticed also that the pigmentation of the Nordic races (if I may allow myself so insufferable a term) is less adapted than that of the Mediterraneans to long exposure to the sun. Among the rocks of Ragusa the young Dalmatians leap and dive with ebony limbs ; an Englishman among them flushes like a lobster which has been boiled. It is all very well to expose ourselves to the healing rays of the sun ; it is not very well to expose ourselves to ridicule or disgust. Conversely, I do not share the theory of the nudists that complete exposure 8ffers a relief from inhibitions. Some twenty years ago I visited a nudist colony in Thuringia ; it was the only occasion on which I.have consciously regretted my enquiring mind ; the memory of that yisit remains as a scar upon my soul. Never in my life have I witnessed such ugliness, such a divestment of human dignity, such deliberately restrained self-consciousness, such stark and affected matiness, such smirking ungainliness. The whole system,- so far from releasing inhibitions, was calculated to induce a physical trauma. I regretted my visit very much indeed.
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Yet when I drove the other day along the banks of the Severn and the Thames and saw the surrounding meadows star-scattered with recumbent human forms, I felt glad that since 1911 we had learned the delights which come from water, sun and grass. The young men of Gloucestershire and Bucks did not, as in Seurat's famous picture, wear bowler hats. They wore no hats at all. They stood straight in the light with uplifted arms, and the girls around them were, like Nausicaa, playing ball and calling each to each. The picture presented did not suggest Seurat's dumpy citizen ; it suggested some symbolic fresco by Puvis de Chavannes. I rejoiced that in these thirty-six years the girls and boys of England should have taught themselves these beneficial physical enjoyments and should be able, in this ardent summer, to extract so much pleasure from the burning sun. The cells of their bodies were absorbing rays which would disperse the poisons of city life and strengthen them to face the glum winter which, before many weeks have passed, will be crunching towards us with its leaden stride. Only once or twice in a lifetime are we in England accorded a summer such as this. Even today our woods and commons burst into sudden flame and the flowers in our gardens hang their weary heads. But at least we have learnt that it is not either immodest or effeminate to rejoice in sunlight or to strip our torsos when we cart the harvest from the fields. I have no regrets whatsoever for the foetid fusty luxury of 1911 ; I prefer to see our politicians in their shirt-sleeves and the grocer's boy upon his bicycle with no shirt at all. And if England is to become merry again she can best become merry out of doors.
* * * * It is sad for me to reflect that in the last really lavish summer
that has visited England—in the long hot summer of 191 was young enough to enjoy the sunlight and yet precluded by horrid custom from enjoying it with that disregard for cuffs and collars which would be permitted me today. Homer, although blind, possessed acute powers of observation ; I respect his advice; I only wish sometimes that ,my coevals would be equally sedate. But let the young people rejoice in their own gainliness and allow the sun to bronze their muscles and tan their skins before the winter comes, before the long dark autumn evenings come, before they cease to be young. And I, who am angered when other younger people fail to enjoy themselves, will only hope that the memory of these summer days will not be clouded for them by any Ambassador, however "nervous and constrained," tolling a bell of warning across their warmed rivers and their shining seas.
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