If the modern world will not
insist on having some sharp and definite moral law, capable of resisting
the counter-attractions of art and humour, the modern world will simply
be given over as a spoil to anybody who can manage to do a nasty thing
in a nice way. Every murderer who can murder entertainingly will be
allowed to murder. Every burglar who burgles in really humorous
attitudes will burgle as much as he likes.
There is another case of the thing that I mean. Why on earth do the
newspapers, in describing a dynamite outrage or any other political
assassination, call it a "dastardly outrage" or a cowardly outrage? It
is perfectly evident that it is not dastardly in the least. It is
perfectly evident that it is about as cowardly as the Christians going
to the lions. The man who does it exposes himself to the chance of being
torn in pieces by two thousand people. What the thing is, is not
cowardly, but profoundly and detestably wicked. The man who does it is
very infamous and very brave. But, again, the explanation is that our
modern Press would rather appeal to physical arrogance, or to anything,
rather than appeal to right and wrong.
In most of the matters of modern England, the real difficulty is that
there is a negative revolution without a positive revolution.
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