National
characteristics are not easy to pin down, and when pinned down they
often turn out to be trivialities or seem to have no connexion with one
another. Spaniards are cruel to animals, Italians can do nothing without
making a deafening noise, the Chinese are addicted to gambling.
Obviously such things don’t matter in themselves. Nevertheless, nothing
is causeless, and even the fact that Englishmen have bad teeth can tell
something about the realities of English life.
Here
are a couple of generalizations about England that would be accepted by
almost all observers. One is that the English are not gifted
artistically. They are not as musical as the Germans or Italians,
painting and sculpture have never flourished in England as they have in
France. Another is that, as Europeans go, the English are not
intellectual. They have a horror of abstract thought, they feel no need
for any philosophy or systematic ‘world-view’. Nor is this because they
are ‘practical’, as they are so fond of claiming for themselves. One has
only to look at their methods of town planning and water supply, their
obstinate clinging to everything that is out of date and a nuisance, a
spelling system that defies analysis, and a system of weights and
measures that is intelligible only to the compilers of arithmetic books,
to see how little they care about mere efficiency. But they have a
certain power of acting without taking thought. Their world-famed
hypocrisy—their double-faced attitude towards the Empire, for
instance—is bound up with this. Also, in moments of supreme crisis the
whole nation can suddenly draw together and act upon a species of
instinct, really a code of conduct which is understood by almost
everyone, though never formulated. The phrase that Hitler coined for the
Germans, ‘a sleep-walking people’, would have been better applied to
the English. Not that there is anything to be proud of in being called a
sleep-walker.
But
here it is worth noting a minor English trait which is extremely well
marked though not often commented on, and that is a love of flowers.
This is one of the first things that one notices when one reaches
England from abroad, especially if one is coming from southern Europe.
Does it not contradict the English indifference to the arts? Not really,
because it is found in people who have no aesthetic feelings whatever.
What it does link up with, however, is another English characteristic
which is so much a part of us that we barely notice it, and that is the
addiction to hobbies and spare-time occupations, the privateness
of English life. We are a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of
stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers,
darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans. All the culture that is most
truly native centres round things which even when they are communal are
not official—the pub, the football match, the back garden, the fireside
and the ‘nice cup of tea’. The liberty of the individual is still
believed in, almost as in the nineteenth century. But this has nothing
to do with economic liberty, the right to exploit others for profit. It
is the liberty to have a home of your own, to do what you like in your
spare time, to choose your own amusements instead of having them chosen
for you from above. The most hateful of all names in an English ear is
Nosey Parker. It is obvious, of course, that even this purely private
liberty is a lost cause. Like all other modern people, the English are
in process of being numbered, labelled, conscripted, ‘co-ordinated’. But
the pull of their impulses is in the other direction, and the kind of
regimentation that can be imposed on them will be modified in
consequence. No party rallies, no Youth Movements, no coloured shirts,
no Jew-baiting or ‘spontaneous’ demonstrations. No Gestapo either, in
all probability.
But in all societies the common people must live to some extent against
the existing order. The genuinely popular culture of England is
something that goes on beneath the surface, unofficially and more or
less frowned on by the authorities. One thing one notices if one looks
directly at the common people, especially in the big towns, is that they
are not puritanical. They are inveterate gamblers, drink as much beer
as their wages will permit, are devoted to bawdy jokes, and use probably
the foulest language in the world. They have to satisfy these tastes in
the face of astonishing, hypocritical laws (licensing laws, lottery
acts, etc. etc.) which are designed to interfere with everybody but in
practice allow everything to happen. Also, the common people are without
definite religious belief, and have been so for centuries. The Anglican
Church never had a real hold on them, it was simply a preserve of the
landed gentry, and the Nonconformist sects only influenced minorities.
And yet they have retained a deep tinge of Christian feeling, while
almost forgetting the name of Christ. The power-worship which is the new
religion of Europe, and which has infected the English intelligentsia,
has never touched the common people. They have never caught up with
power politics. The ‘realism’ which is preached in Japanese and Italian
newspapers would horrify them. One can learn a good deal about the
spirit of England from the comic coloured postcards that you see in the
windows of cheap stationers’ shops. These things are a sort of diary
upon which the English people have unconsciously recorded themselves.
Their old-fashioned outlook, their graded snobberies, their mixture of
bawdiness and hypocrisy, their extreme gentleness, their deeply moral
attitude to life, are all mirrored there.
The
gentleness of the English civilization is perhaps its most marked
characteristic. You notice it the instant you set foot on English soil.
It is a land where the bus conductors are good-tempered and the
policemen carry no revolvers. In no country inhabited by white men is it
easier to shove people off the pavement. And with this goes something
that is always written off by European observers as ‘decadence’ or
hypocrisy, the English hatred of war and militarism. It is rooted deep
in history, and it is strong in the lower-middle class as well as the
working class. Successive wars have shaken it but not destroyed it. Well
within living memory it was common for ‘the redcoats’ to be booed at in
the streets and for the landlords of respectable public houses to
refuse to allow soldiers on the premises. In peace time, even when there
are two million unemployed, it is difficult to fill the ranks of the
tiny standing army, which is officered by the country gentry and a
specialized stratum of the middle class, and manned by farm labourers
and slum proletarians. The mass of the people are without military
knowledge or tradition, and their attitude towards war is invariably
defensive. No politician could rise to power by promising them conquests
or military ‘glory’, no Hymn of Hate has ever made any appeal to them.
In the last war the songs which the soldiers made up and sang of their
own accord were not vengeful but humorous and mock-defeatist. The only
enemy they ever named was the sergeant-major.