DOI article:
Le Gallienne, Richard: Four prose fancies
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27805#0328
Four Prose Fancies:
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France, Russia, or Germany to undertake our government.
Japan, indeed, already dictates our foreign policy. The worst of
being conquered by Russia would be the necessity of learning
Russian ; whereas a little rubbing up of our French would make
us comfortable with France. Besides, to be conquered by France
would save us crossing the Channel to Paris, and then we might
hope for cafes in Regent Street, and an emancipated literature.
As a matter of fact, so-called national interests are merely certain
private interests on a large scale, the private interests of financiers,
ambitious politicians and soldiers, and great merchants. Broadly
speaking, there are no rival nations—there are rival markets, and
it is its Board of Trade and its Stock Exchange rather than its
Houses of Parliament that virtually govern a country. Thus
one seaport goes down and another comes up, industries forsake
one country to bless another, the military and naval strengths of
nations fluctuate this way and that ; and to those whom these
changes affect they are undoubtedly important matters—the great
capitalist, the soldier, and the politician ; but to the quiet man at
home with his wife, his children, his books and his flowers, to the
artist busied with braver translunary matters, to the saint with his
eyes filled with “ the white radiance of eternity,” to the shepherd
on the hillside, the milkmaid in love, or the angler at his sport—
what are these pompous commotions, these busy, bustling mimicries
of reality ? England will be just as good to live in though men
some day call her France. Let the big busy bodies divide her
amongst them as they like, so that they leave one alone with one’s
fair share of the sky and the grass, and an occasional not too
vociferous nightingale.
The reader will perhaps forgive the hackneyed reference to Sir
Thomas Browne peacefully writing his Religio Medici amid all
the commotions of the Civil War, and to Gautier calmly cor-
recting
324
France, Russia, or Germany to undertake our government.
Japan, indeed, already dictates our foreign policy. The worst of
being conquered by Russia would be the necessity of learning
Russian ; whereas a little rubbing up of our French would make
us comfortable with France. Besides, to be conquered by France
would save us crossing the Channel to Paris, and then we might
hope for cafes in Regent Street, and an emancipated literature.
As a matter of fact, so-called national interests are merely certain
private interests on a large scale, the private interests of financiers,
ambitious politicians and soldiers, and great merchants. Broadly
speaking, there are no rival nations—there are rival markets, and
it is its Board of Trade and its Stock Exchange rather than its
Houses of Parliament that virtually govern a country. Thus
one seaport goes down and another comes up, industries forsake
one country to bless another, the military and naval strengths of
nations fluctuate this way and that ; and to those whom these
changes affect they are undoubtedly important matters—the great
capitalist, the soldier, and the politician ; but to the quiet man at
home with his wife, his children, his books and his flowers, to the
artist busied with braver translunary matters, to the saint with his
eyes filled with “ the white radiance of eternity,” to the shepherd
on the hillside, the milkmaid in love, or the angler at his sport—
what are these pompous commotions, these busy, bustling mimicries
of reality ? England will be just as good to live in though men
some day call her France. Let the big busy bodies divide her
amongst them as they like, so that they leave one alone with one’s
fair share of the sky and the grass, and an occasional not too
vociferous nightingale.
The reader will perhaps forgive the hackneyed reference to Sir
Thomas Browne peacefully writing his Religio Medici amid all
the commotions of the Civil War, and to Gautier calmly cor-
recting