One cannot read for
three consecutive years of nothing but poison-gas and blood and
explosives without engendering a corresponding mood - a mood which
expresses itself in every one according to whether he thinks
individually or nationally; whether he cultivates an impartial
conscience or surrenders to that of the crowd.
For the man and his race
are everlastingly tugging in different directions, and unreasoning
subservience to race-ideals has clouded many a bright intellect. How
many things a race can do which its component members, taken separately,
would blush to imitate! Our masses are now fighting for commercial
supremacy. The ideal may well be creditable to a nation. It is hardly
good enough for a gentleman. He reacts; he meditates a Gospel of Revolt
against these vulgarities; he catches himself saying, as he reads the
morning paper full of national-flag fetishism and sanguinary nonsense:
"One Beethoven symphony is a greater victory than the greatest of these,
and reasonable folks may live under any rule save that of a wind-fed
herd."
It avails nothing. The day has dawned, the day of those who pull
downwards - stranglers of individualism. Can a man subscribe to the
aspirations of a mob and yet think well of himself? Can he be black and
white? He can be what he is, what most of us are: neutral tint. Look
around you: a haze of cant and catchwords. Such things are employed on
political platforms and by the Press as a kind of pepsine, to aid our
race-stomach in digesting certain heavy doses of irrationalism.
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