第6章 THE THING(2)

Now,these are just the sort of things with which self-government was really supposed to grapple.People were supposed to be able to indicate whether they wished to live in town or country,to be represented by a gentleman or a cad.I do not presume to prejudge their decision;perhaps they would prefer the cad;perhaps he is really preferable.I say that the filling of a man's native sky with smoke or the selling of his roof over his head illustrate the sort of things he ought to have some say in,if he is supposed to be governing himself.But owing to the strange trend of recent society,these enormous earthquakes he has to pass over and treat as private trivialities.In theory the building of a villa is as incidental as the buying of a hat.In reality it is as if all Lancashire were laid waste for deer forests;or as if all Belgium were flooded by the sea.In theory the sale of a squire's land to a money-lender is a minor and exceptional necessity.In reality it is a thing like a German invasion.Sometimes it is a German invasion.

Upon this helpless populace,gazing at these prodigies and fates,comes round about every five years a thing called a General Election.It is believed by antiquarians to be the remains of some system of self-government;but it consists solely in asking the citizen questions about everything except what he understands.The examination paper of the Election generally consists of some such queries as these:"I.Are the green biscuits eaten by the peasants of Eastern Lithuania in your opinion fit for human food?II.Are the religious professions of the President of the Orange Free State hypocritical or sincere?III.Do you think that the savages in Prusso-Portuguese East Bunyipland are as happy and hygienic as the fortunate savages in Franco-British West Bunyipland?IV.

Did the lost Latin Charter said to have been exacted from Henry IIIreserve the right of the Crown to create peers?V.What do you think of what America thinks of what Mr.Roosevelt thinks of what Sir Eldon Gorst thinks of the state of the Nile?VI.Detect some difference between the two persons in frock-coats placed before you at this election."Now,it never was supposed in any natural theory of self-government that the ordinary man in my neighbourhood need answer fantastic questions like these.He is a citizen of South Bucks,not an editor of 'Notes and Queries'.He would be,I seriously believe,the best judge of whether farmsteads or factory chimneys should adorn his own sky-line,of whether stupid squires or clever usurers should govern his own village.But these are precisely the things which the oligarchs will not allow him to touch with his finger.Instead,they allow him an Imperial destiny and divine mission to alter,under their guidance,all the things that he knows nothing about.The name of selfgovernment is noisy everywhere:the Thing is throttled.

The wind sang and split the sky like thunder all the night through;in scraps of sleep it filled my dreams with the divine discordances of martyrdom and revolt;I heard the horn of Roland and the drums of Napoleon and all the tongues Of terror with which the Thing has gone forth:the spirit of our race alive.But when I came down in the morning only a branch or two was broken off the tree in my garden;and none of the great country houses in the neighbourhood were blown down,as would have happened if the Thing had really been abroad.