MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
IHAVE been reading this week a sffinulating volume in which Mr. G. M. Young has collected what he describes as his Last Essays. I have a respect for Mr. Young, since I admire his prim probity, enjoy his odd allusions and ideas, and am coming to believe that he writes better prose than any of us. If, as he contends, we are on the verge of a new renaissance, then young men and maidens should study Mr Young's way of writing and examine why, with all his austerity, he manages to give such comeliness to his page. It is, I suppose, because Mr. Young is more concerned with shape and clarity than with colour or sound ; this architectural quality is agreeable to us who are living in the early dawn of a classical revival. But what I relish most in Mr. Young is his bright fantasy. In this book, for instance, he repeatedly asserts that the historian should devote his attention, not so much to what happened, as to what ordinary men and women thought of these happenings at the time they occurred. According to this theory, the research-worker should not content himself with the mere copying of documents, but should enter into terms of such intimacy with these documents that he begins to hear the people talking and to catch the sound of voices in the room. We should all agree that no historian can claim to be familiar with his period unless he be acquainted, not merely with the facts, but also with the states of mind which prevailed at the time. But is it really possible for any historian, however vivid may be his imagination, to recapture the exact atmosphere of a bygone period ? There must always remain certain habits of thought, certain prejudices and affections, which will elude his observation. , Since it is not true to say that humam nature remains the same at bottom. There exists no ascertainable continuity in states of mind and people of one generation do, in fact, think and feel quite differently from people of a preceding generation. The scale of values alters every thirty years.
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We should all agree with Mr. Young that it is the duty of the historian to take constant account of this changing climate of thought, and to realise that tht men and women whose actions he is describing were impelled by motives, or restrained by inhibitions, wholly different from those- which animate or check us today , We should agree also that the historian must allow his imagination to play upon his period, and must force himself to visualise the men and women behind the muniments and to picture to himself the manner in Which they walked and talked. How incomplete, for instance, would be our conception of the Athenians if we judged only by the Propylaea or the Funeral Oration and turned deaf ears to the clamour of the market-place or the shrill cries, in foetid alleys, of the eel-vendors from Copais. Mr. Young is himself too experi- enced a scholar not to admit that the too imaginative historian may adopt a fictional attitude towards his material, and may be tempted to assume a scale of values which although valid today, was not valid at the time which he is describing. The Talisman is an ex- cellent story, but it is not good history. Moreover, on the occasions when I have watched history in the making, I have been convinced that the historian is apt to attribute too much importance to the element of purpose or intention, to argue on the system post hoc, propter hoc, and to ignore the fact that most human actions are Purposeless and motiveless and are influenced by fortuitous and momentary factors which are too trivial to record. Even the most Powerful imagination will fail to account for the part played in human transactions by such incidental chances as vanity, lassitude, impatience or personal affections or dislikes.
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Moreover, as I have said, states of mind alter completely with each succeeding generation. Even in my own lifetime I have Observed fundamental changes in the climate of public opinion, in the quality of social conscience, in the accepted standard of values. Events or portents which in 1910 would have aroused in all classes
violent emotions of fear or resentment are today accepted with almost paralysed acquiescence. Of these alterations one of the most significant is the decline in the sense of personal responsibility. To a certain extent this decline has been occasioned by the gradual identification of the individual with his economic class ; to an even greater extent it has been caused by a feeling of impotence, by the conviction that the destinies of the earth are determined by blind forces which neither you nor I are able to control or comprehend. A considerable factor in this change has been the immense popu- larity of the psychoanalytical interpretation of human behaviour. The theories of Freud and Jung, if rightly understood, can do much to widen the area of human sympathy and to mitigate private un- happiness. But the variations on their doctrines have induced the weak idea that man is not responsible for vice or virtue, and that even the most sinister actions must be ascribed, not to evil inten- tion, but to some unfortunate malformation of the endocrine glands. It is wrong, according to this idea, to punish or even reproach a man for a pituitary defect. And thereby the old sense of personal responsibility has been sadly diminished.
Such changes in the climate of thought and feeling would, I con- tend, be difficult for the most imaginative historian to assess correctly. How, for instance, would he analyse or account for the marked differences in the state of mind of the public in the two world wars ? Consider, for instance, the mysterious alteration in the public attitude towards the aliens in our midst. Whereas in the first war people were driven almost insane by spy-mania, in the second war there was hardly any spy-hysteria at all. In the 1914- 1918 war perfectly urbane men and women became convinced that their neighbours were signalling to the Zeppelins with flash-lights concealed in their attics. People of foreign extraction who had laid down cement swimming-pools or 'even hard tennis-courts in their suburban gardens were accused of having planned these ameni- ties as emplacements for German batteries. The idiocy of the rumours which were circulated about eminent men and women was only equalled by their injustice. I can remember driving a dis- tinguished Royal Academician almost to the verge of epilepsy when I contended that a foreign portrait-painter had not, in fact, been guilty of treachery towards the country of his adoption. When the second war descended upon us I dreaded that we should witness a renewal of this cruel hysteria. In the interval between the two wars wireless had been perfected, and I foresaw that any citizen of foreign extraction would be suspected of possessing a secret transmitter in his garage. The example of Norway had shown us with what in- genuity the Germans could organise a fifth column to aid invasion. Yet in spite of these two excuses for increased suspicion, the public, in the second war, manifested comparative calm. Even in the ter- rifying weeks which followed Dunkirk our citizens maintained a sense of justice. History did not repeat herself.
When the historian comes to look back upon these summer months of 1950 and seeks to recapture the state of mind in which we faced our crisis, what will be the voices that he hears ? He will have the documents before him, and will read the columns of the newspapers and of Hansard with scrupulous attention. Yet how will he be able to feel as we feel and to hear the people talking in the streets ? That, according to Mr. G. M. Young, is the feat which., if he be a good historian, he ought to be able to achieve. At every corner he will hear the whisper: "Is it war ? " He will sense our anger and our apprehension. But how, in the after- vacancy, will he be able to recapture the blind peering of it all, the dumb dread ? Will he become aware of our ignorance, our paralysing ignorance, the helpless feeling that we do not know what may occur ? He will know what happened ; will he havd the imagination to recapture the horror of our ignorance ?
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