VIEWPOINT

The devil wore a crucifix

GEORGE GALE

A few weeks ago my wife and I were hasten- ing through streets and squares of Kensing- ton wet and cold with rain, looking for a house whose address we had lost, and becoming progressively out of temper with each other and with everything else.

Then towards us down the middle of a road two women approached, first a negress and behind her a uniformed policewoman. Both of them were running very slowly, being obviously near to exhaustion, weak- ened at the knees. The gap between them was constant: the negress was not succeed- ing in her flight nor the policewoman in her capture. The policewoman saw us and shouted 'Stop her!' My wife and I reacted, because of our angry preoccupation with our own plight. pretty instinctively, I sup- pose. My wife started off immediately in full pursuit of the negress. I stood still and shouted at the policewoman 'What for?' and she gasped back at me 'I want her'. I could see that, and it seemed to me so fatuous a reply that I then shouted to my wife 'Come back' just as she was about to catch the negress. My wife stopped and came back to me; the negress continued running slowly down the street and around the corner, the policewoman still chasing her.

I have since felt somewhat uneasy about my own role in this incident. It was un- doubtedly my duty as a citizen to assist the policewoman by stopping the negress, a task which would have been comfortably within my physical capacity, given the exhaustion of the negress. Instead. I stood still like a ninny while my wife, braver and more active by far, set off in hot pursuit. Then I started arguing, in effect, with the policewoman. Fatuous her reply 'I want her' may have been, but how more fatuous was my initial question, and how dotty my reaction to her gasped reply? I called my wife off the chase because, so I liked to think, of the unsatis- factory nature of the policewoman's reply. But it undoubtedly suited me not to get either of us entangled in a situation which could have made us later still for our engagement. What I did, which was noth- ing at all except some stupid arguing, suited my interests best.

It is not considered morally respectable to act in what one takes to be one's best inter- est; and thus it is that that tiny minority of people who think and talk and write about the moral behaviour of the vast majority of their fellow-men do so in terms of disappro- bation. Indeed, what is judged to be moral behaviour is usually behaviour which osten- sibly is against one's best interests, or at the very least is ostensibly disinterested. That is what is moral about it. Goodness is a matter of sacrifice: such is the burden of the moral instruction we principally receive and propa- gate. Moreover, since most of such instruc- tion has to do with political behaviour, which is behaviour we do at the behest or on the instructions of our rulers, we are con- tinually exhorted or ordered to act with a sense of duty: which means to act other than we would do if left to our own devices and inclinations, to be prepared to sacrifice our interests and sometimes our lives.

However, for the same vast majority, it is undoubtedly more comfortable and enjoy- able, less awkward, to obey rules than to disobey them if in so doing punishment is likely. Such punishment can include obloquy. Men become soldiers unless they feel so strongly against killing as such or against a particular war that they are prepared to face the general disapproval of their fellows or unless their particular fellows praise their disobedience. To do one's duty usually means not only to obey the rules but also to comply with the exhortations of the rulers. Generally, in well-ordered societies such as ours, men obey the rules, or laws, but do not necessarily comply with the ex- hortations. For this lack of complicity, which to my mind is reasonable and ad- mirable as well as selfish, they are continu- ally blamed and made to feel guilty.

I am by no means certain that a man can sensibly be said to have a general or social duty. I fancy propagating that the only duty a man may rightly have is to eschew all sense of general or social duty. He is respon- sible as he may be for the consequences of his actions: that is all, and that is quite enough. In fact, it is far too much for almost all. Duties imposed, and accepted, are pleasureful opportunities for every man to escape from the obligations inherent in his own actions. Duties, therefore, although seemingly unpopular, are readily accepted. Men gladly go off to war, leaving their `loved' ones behind, and seldom seriously question the purposes of the war.

A few days before Christmas I went to a school's carol service where I heard what I had not expected, certainly not in any church. The boys sang what was termed a carol; and I found myself agreeing with almost all of it. This 'carol' is most oppor- tune to carry us out of the 'sixties into the 'seventies:

The Devil wore a Crucifix, 'The Christians they are right' The Devil said, `so let us burn A Heretic tonight, a Heretic tonight'.

A lily or a swastika. A shamrock or a star.

The Devil he can wear them all—

No matter what they are.

in red or blue or khaki, In green or black and tan. The Devil is a patriot, A proper party man.

Wherever there's a lynching The Devil will be there— A witch or an apostle. The Devil doesn't care.

He'll beat a drum in China, He'll beat it in the West, He'll beat a drum for anyone, 'A Holy War is best.'

The Devil isn't down in hell, Or riding in the sky, The Devil's dead (I've heard it said)— They're telling you a lie.

This piece of theological doggerel seemed to me to be an admirable carol for children to sing. teaching them, in effect, that their duty was not to do their duty. But the trouble was that they sang it, with all the most innocent sound of boys' unbroken voices in an ancient church, out of nothing but their sense of inculcated, educated privil- eged duty. They would have been just as happy, if not happier (for it has a better tune) singing 'Land of Hope and Glory'.

Still and all, the best advice, the most modest advice, is that implicit in the carol: When in doubt, do nothing.

It is, of course, ignoble to stand or turn aside: but it is better than joining in the punch-up. Another way of saying that the only duty a man may rightly have is to eschew all sense of duty, is to say, 'Spread wide the seeds of doubt, for when men grow up in doubt they are more likely to do nothing much against their better interests.' And an equable and doubtful New Year to you all.