Bad Manners as a Substitute for War

FOR years most of us have been expecting the outbreak of war at almost any moment. Goodness knows there have been enough incidents, outrages, and provocations for any number of conflicts. At last it is dawning on some of us that, although all the ingredients are there for a first-class war, they don’t seem to produce the old-fashioned results. What is the matter?

Is it not that we owe the precarious peace we have enjoyed to the progressive deterioration of public manners? That may sound ridiculous on the face of it, but let us sit down together and look at the facts.

Some twenty-odd years ago, in the old days of good-mannered diplomacy, the amenities were observed — but at what a cost when they were not! An unmannerly speech by a responsible Minister, an unpleasant insinuation regarding the motives of another Government, might readily precipitate a situation where national honor would be satisfied in one way only: by shedding blood, stealing livestock, burning houses and barns, and bringing about general ruin with a view to proving the offender wrong — unless, of course, the offender got there first and the blood, stock, houses, barns, and ruin were yours. In this case you continued to feel as you did before, and stored up your wrath to make you feel even more cantankerous the next time.

But the Great War to End Wars changed all that. It evolved for us a new instinct for avoiding trouble.

For four solid years we built up the habit of blackguarding other countries. That is to say, we acquired the habit of cursing enemy countries, peoples, governments, and statesmen in a free-andeasy way. It was part of winning the war. Good patriots vied with one another in vilification and we developed a new technique of insult.

After the war we continued to insult enemy countries for many reasons and for none. But then there came a change.

During the war years the world was black and white: we and our Allies were as snow; the enemy and all his confederates were ebon. As the common danger waned and ceased to exert its cohesive force, our critical faculty continued wide-awake and began to discern blemishes and flaws even in our cherished Allies.

This was something of a shock. At first we spoke to and of them with restraint. We intimated with reluctance that they disappointed us and were being tiresome. But as they did not mend their ways we were obliged to be more specific and make it clear that they were unreasonable, selfish, grasping, pigheaded, and altogether intolerable. They were, no question of it. But were they grateful to us for calling these shortcomings to their attention? They were not. They did not even try to reform, and as time went on they became so intoxicated with their own egotism that they began to criticize US!

That, of course, was more than we could be expected to bear, and it was not long before the infamies of the enemy began to recede into a charitable shade, while the shortcomings of our misguided Allies loomed larger and larger.

We were already keyed up to the use of high-explosive language, language that would stand the strain of emotion, and we proceeded to use on our errant friends the same sort of abuse with which we had scorched the enemy of yesterday.

Not only did we employ conversational abuse. We had raised insult to the dignity of a profession and even of an art. Parliaments and the press, radio, the stage, and all other forms of publicity contributed their bit to the building up of bad feeling in defense of democracy.

So when our Allies provoked us beyond endurance by wanting to have their way as much as we wanted to have ours, we blasted them with all the enthusiasm and skill we had developed through practice on the enemy.

The press in all countries, conscious of its high mission, took the lead. The men who yesterday were heroes, patriots, and leaders of the human race, became overnight scoundrels, liars, and renegades — along with various other things indicative of a drastic change in their character and habits.

The politicians followed. A hot pace was set for them by the press and by the private patriot. The politician, however, realized what he was up against and rose to the occasion by developing an unprecedented ferocity in ticking off the miserable foreigners.

And thus began the vicious circle, the speeches of the politicians serving as welcome material for the press, and the reprinting in each country of the blasts originating elsewhere.

And so it went on for years with a virulence unknown before, went on until this became the normal technique of international discussion. Here is how it works.

Does A owe B money?

The old-fashioned procedure would be for A to pay up or, failing that, to approach B in a conciliatory spirit and seek to come to a favorable agreement.

Nowadays there is a different approach. The first step is to hold B up to public contempt as a Shylock, bloodsucker, swindler of women and children, who is so lost to all human decency as to want his money back — or at least some of it, sometime — and on the preposterous and purely technical ground that it had been so agreed.

Then B has to defend himself and he does it bravely. He denounces A as a contemptible crook seeking to avoid the payment of his honest debts by methods which reveal him as the detestable blighter we always considered him.

Do C and D disagree about disarmament?

D fills the air and the press with charges that C is an infamous foe of disarmament and peace who came to the conference merely in order to wreck it. Every proposal he makes is obviously to this end. C is the chief if not the only obstacle to international good understanding.

C replies that the disarmament proposals of D are proof of the crassest hypocrisy; that D intends to do no disarming himself and that his proposals are aimed solely at weakening others; and so on and so on.

This has become a sort of game played on the international field. Politicians defend their countries and defy their enemies with a wealth of invective that goes over big with the press and the people.

At first we regarded this sort of thing with apprehension, lest one word too much precipitate a conflict. We deplored such exhibitions of bad manners and sought to find a way to get back to the more courteous style of other days; but all in vain.

Before the war one such speech would have caused Europe to quiver and the stock exchange to run a temperature. But times and manners have changed. When the Prime Minister of Pumpernickel assails the great Sister Republic of Ballyhoo, is the Ballyhoovian Army mobilized? Not at all. We do better than that nowadays. The Prime Minister of Pumpernickel, having delivered his speech, sits back on his haunches as who should say: ‘That will hold him for a while.’ What he really means is that it has been a good day’s work, because the Chambers will not dare throw him out while the echoes of his patriotic frenzy are still reverberating.

Does the Prime Minister of Ballyhoo call the nation to arms? No indeed. Does he summon the Council of Ministers? Not so that you would notice it. He summons the press and says to them in effect: ‘You may say that the people of Ballyhoo can count on me to defend their honor and refute the dastardly slanders of the craven Government of Pumpernickel. To-morrow in the Chamber at five o’clock.’

So he in his turn looses his verbal artillery and the press of Ballyhoo asserts that he has completely demolished the second-rate statesman of Pumpernickel — and everybody feels all warm and patriotic and no bones are broken.

Things can go on like this, waxing ever fiercer and fiercer — and less and less fraught with danger. There are many advantages in this. There was one thing about the arbitrament of war that was most unfair: God was notoriously on the side of the big battalions; a small country hardly had a chance.

Now all that is changed. Equality and Democracy have come to dwell among us. The Grand Duchy of Luxemburg can safely defy Soviet Russia, and the verdict, if any, goes to the country with the best Radio Voice.

And suppose Russia loses. Under the new Dispensation she merely turns her attention elsewhere while her scouts seek a more effective speaker. If so, they win the next round in the ether — unless, of course, Luxemburg has in the meantime hired Rudy Vallee as Prime Minister.

We are gradually coming to feel a sense of security under the wings of our long-distance Insulters that we never were able to feel under the protection of our guns and battleships. We know that the ever fiercer wrangling of the press and our politicians permits us to sleep in our beds without thought of invasion. And we may even hope that universal peace may come to prevail under the ægis of universal hate.

So blessed be Bad Manners.