Pleiades
Icrrt S'eottcOs Opetair ye IleXecciScov /di TriXOBev'flapicova vela-eat. (PDTDAR) " It is likely that Orion should not move far away from the mountain Pleiades "—for Orion was a hunter, and he chased the flying Pleiades for five years over the woods and mountains of Boeotia (absit omen : Boeotia was a dull country, and even the mention of it may cast a blight on the pen), until he and they were translated to the skies, and even then he shone impending over the constellation in which they were placed. But who are the Pleiades here, and who is Orion? Perhaps they are the winking points of fire in the intellectual heaven, the topics that glitter, the thoughts that excite ; and perhaps he is—well, not a star, certainly not a star, but a sort of astrono- mer who chases stars. , .
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Our talk at luncheon the other day, in the course of its wander.. ings, fell suddenly upon Chairs and Professors. A minute before we had been talking about the Conference now sitting in London ; and my friend on the right, at this turn- in our conversation, said at once to me, " Oh, what we want is a Chair of International Psychology 1 " I fell to thinking after- wards about his quick saying ; and these were some of my thoughts.
It is the interpretation of France to England, and of England to France, that matters profoundly to-day. For centuries they have lived in contact, always in contact—sometimes giving, and taking blows, but far oftener- giving and taking influences upon one another's lives, influences of all sorts, literary, philosophical, artistic, political ; and yet, at the end of the centuries, there seems to be a psychological gulf still stretching .between them.. It is a pity, a pity of pities ; for the peace of Europe and the peaceable development of the system of Europe laid down in 1919, depend on their under- standing and co-operation. But how difficult is the under- standing, and how disturbed the co-operation ! How easy it is for an Englishman, at his politest (but politeness is not always his virtue), to grumble about the " realistic tenacity " of the French ; and how easy it is for a Frenchman, with his gift of incisive and devastating penetration, to storm inwardly, and even outwardly, about English refusal to " come to grips " and face the logic of reality, English tentativeness in days of discussion, the English fear of being pinned down to clear
engagements in the hour of decision. •
We are, very different ; and yet an Englishman, if he is wise, will find much to-admire in the differences of the French. They are his complements ; but it is easier for a man to under- st.nd his duplicate, which is like himself and just himself over again, than it -is for him to understand his complement, is in its nature unlike. The Frenchman faces the present 'position of Europe, the prospects of disarmament, the future of the League of Nations, in a way of his own—a way which cannot be neglected, because, after all, it has a good deal of truth.. Centuries of history have burned into his mind the need for security. He has seen his land wasted (a land he knows, and tills, and loves, with a passion beyond our way of thinking) ; and he wants to be sure—oh, very sure—that it will not be wasted again. He is willing to defend his land : he is ready to serve, as every Frenchman actually serves, in a civic and democratic army, which is the army of the people. He does not merely- talk and vote : he acts, and he serves. You ask him to be international ; you ask him to bring his gifts and his national genius to the cause of international peace. He does not refuse : he is very far from refusing. He only says that he is bound to come with his particular gifts, his national genius, his peculiar prepossessions. Internationally, as well as nationally, he wants security. He desires an international system in which a League of Nations not only talks and votes, but also acts and serves. He wants a real League which will ,to something : which will guarantee security by the effective sanctionof the use of armed force against the aggressor: which will not be a mere talking, or a House of Consultation, but an activity, a reality, an Army. On this condition he can disarm, by land and at sea and in the air : he can disarm- because he will not be throwing away his arms ; he can disarm because, if he has fewer arms left, he will have added to him the pooled arms of other nations ; he can disarm, and ask others to disarm,
because, if they have fewer arms left, they will have added to them the arms he brings into the general pool. For he is anxious to give, no less than to receive ; and he feels, with a genuine feeling, that his arms—his aeroplanes, his bayonets, his submarines—are all potential gifts to an international system of Right based on international treaties. There is logic in all this, and there is a sense of law as well as a sense of logic.
What did our English Hobbes say ? " The validity of coven- ants begins not but with the constitution of a . . . power sufficient to compel men to keep them." Hobbes was logical—indeed, for an Englishman, wonderfully so. Why not listen to Hobbes' logic ? And then, in addition to logic, there is law—not very different, perhaps ; for law is just practical logic. Law is 'a wise sort of science : it looks at the world in a shrewd and Sensible wiry. It does not put its trust in simple promises and understandings and consultations. It knows they may be broken or ignored ; and it takes pains to arrange what shall happen if they arc broken or ignored. The arrangements it makes are called "sanctions" ; and sanctions mean penalties. and penalties are enforceable, and enforcement, of course. means the use of force. If you want a public law of Europe, and a system of international right, you must have the corol- laries of law and right : you must have sanctions and penalties and their enforcement.
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The English have come to their way of thinking through a long process of history. They had a parliament over 600 years ago. Parliament means talking ; and they have been talking in their parliaments for 600 years. Talking to them is not only talking : it is an act, it is a drama, or doing, in the realm of the human spirit—not always, of course (there is talking which is just chatter), not always, but again and again, in grave issues of deliberation when talk and discussion issue in the emergence of " the com- mon mind " or " the sense of the meeting," which surely is an act, or an event, and an act or event of the highest order. We in England, by the process of our history, have a habit of talking ourselves into a result—an emergence, an act, an event; by which we abide (because it has happened and is there), and which, to our thinking, hardly needs sanctions. All of us in England have attended " meetings " which began as tenta- tive and tiresome gropings, perhaps never came to a formal resolution, and yet left us in a new position and on a new plane. It is a habit that runs through our political life It is also a habit deep in some ranges of our religious life. When we speak of " the sense of the meeting," we are using a Quaker phrase. We are speaking in terms of the Quaker idea of waiting for the emergence of the moving spirit—the to-and-fro spirit of grave discussion—which will make us one, and give us unity of heart and mind. All Englishmen are not Quakers : indeed, few Englishmen are Quakers. But We have all of us, perhaps, a little of the Quaker strain. We have all a habit of " meetings " in one way or another. And all our meetings have something of the spirit and procedure of the meeting house.
The English habit is, perhaps, easy in an island. There is time for talkand security for talking. Matters are not so simple when you have a land-frontier, and men must be ready to spring from the soil,' like the dragon's teeth in the fable, to defend the soil against dragons. The " moat 'defensive " of the four seas is a great factor in our national psychology. We must think ourselves over to the other side of the moat before we can enter, as we ought to enter, into the psychology of other nations. Perhaps, too, we may fairly ask other nations to think themselves over to our side. Meanwhile, the greatest gain of the last dozen years is that the nations generally have begun to talk with one another—not only at Geneva, but also at Washington, at The Hague, in London, everywhere. After all, our way of talking, parleying, consulta- tion, pooling minds, trying to find " the sense of.the meeting," is making head. It is not the only way. But it is difficult for Englishmen not to think it a good way. ORION.
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