i6 
LAND & WATER 
January 4, 1917 
McTavish on the English Genius 
By Joseph Thorp 
MY friend McTavish is a lawyer by trade and 
has the profoundest contempt, if you are to 
judge by his talk, for the negative and 
strictly unnecessary work which it is his fate 
to do — and do so confoundedly well. On the rare 
occasions on which it is necessary for me to have business 
dealings with him the matter in hand is swiftly and com- 
petently handled and I am thereafter treated to some 
delightfully unexpected dissertation on any old thing 
that happens to be bubbling in McTavish's brain at the 
moment. For Mac is primarily a detached observer 
of the follies and fashions of mankind ; a ferocious cynic 
in speech and, of course, a genuinely kindly soul in fact. 
His idiom is the idiom of the scholar abruptly modified 
by the oaths of the ordinary man of action, 'soldier, 
cattleman, bus conductor, and what not ; his accent is 
the pure granite of his native Aberdeen — a fine hard gritty 
affair which easily takes pride of place in his Inn. 
The other day a propos nothing in particular McTavish 
delivered himself of the following imexpected opening : 
" Since the war, I'd have you know, I have come to have 
the most profound admiration of the geographical Eng- 
lishman." A profound admiration of the geographical 
Scotsman is much more in Mac's line, so I put down my 
hat and prepared to hear the unexpected thesis developed. 
" I mean the man of real English stock " — Mac is 
great on stock — " none of your half-breeds. I suppose 
you haven't observed that you English being an en- 
tirely unvocal people get most of your talking done for 
you by Scots and Irishmen. Your newspapers are almost 
entirely run by them ; and particularly by the half- 
breeds, a talkative and irresponsible lot. After the 
Jutland battle I happened to see the women, Belgravia 
women and Pimlico women, waiting outnde the Admiralty 
for news of their men, solid and calm " (here the cynic was 
side-tracked for the moment) " and splendid, the smart ones 
particularly cheering up the others. All the hysteria 
was supplied by the half-breeds in their papers. You 
understand that, don't you ? .A,nd it's typical. The 
English aren't a bit like English newspapers. There 
aren't any English newspapers. No wonder. the German 
fellows had a false estimate of English stav'ing power. 
Well, that's by the way." 
I suppress here the entirely inadequate replies I made 
to my friend. For Mac's authentic method is monologue. 
I am a bit of a monologist myself, and decent dog doesn't 
eat dog. It was Mac's innings, and he was in spate. So 
1 let him have his head. 
" You'll not have noticed " — 'tis my friend's way 
always to assume you haven't noticed — " that the Scots 
genius is alUed to the Continental — to both the French 
and the German. Baron von Hiigel confirms this in a 
recent theological paper, but confirmation is not necessary. 
The Irish and Welsh are in the same class. You can call 
it the logical genius. They all have ideas and they'll 
all logically foHow out these ideas whether they're right 
ideas or wrong ideas to the bitter end. Now 
the Englishman doesn't believe in ideas — in the abstract. 
There's nothing logical about him. He hasn't a logical 
Constitutioft. He hasn't a logical code of law. He has 
the most desperately illogical church. No one but an 
Englishman could, for instance, be an Anglican." 
" But — and here's the point — life's not a logical matter. 
Or put it another way, the factors are so numerous and 
elusive, that no one can get a complete survey of them 
all. Something essential is sure to be left out in the 
calculation. That's why. the Englishman doesn't cal- 
culate. He experiments. And life really is empirical, 
the true method is a method of trial and error. That's 
where the Englishman comes in." 
" Take the British Empire. It simply came together 
anyhow. Nobody planned it. The English genius — ■ 
for though, as I've often told you, it's we Scots do most of 
the work, I now come to see that the solid quiet Enghsh- 
nian is behind using us, manipulating us — would .rtever 
face the thought of a really organised Empire. It was 
(|uite content to let all thedaughter nations gooff and set 
up house-keeping elsewhere and disown their parentage. 
But somehow, having done the worst possible thing, as 
in the matter of the tea-chests, just at the appropriate 
moment it docs something which is essentially the best 
thing to do in the circumstances. You get Lord Durham 
and }'ou get the South African Constitution." 
" Your German sees the British Empiie. He sees 
that dull fellow the Englishman who doesn't know what 
he's got or how to use it ; says to himself, ' This is my job. 
I can make an Empire beside which the British will be 
merely a joke.' .A.nd he gets out some squared paper 
and works it all out to four places of decimals. All 
very logical and clever but — Empires aren't made that 
way. As Napoleon found." 
" I used to think we should win the war in spite of our 
muddling. I now think we shall win it because of muddl- 
ing. It's the English genius to muddle. But that's 
not the Englishman's loss— it's his gain. Life is a muddle. 
War is a muddle — a damned awkward muddle, much loo 
serious for logic to straighten out." 
" Every other serious nation in this war had a plan of 
campaign. It was to do this and this and all would be 
well. Germany had a time-table, and France pranced off 
into Alsace. The Englishman had no particular plan 
and no particular army. And he made some fatuous 
and appalling mistakes. And he learned from his mis- 
takes — more than the other fellows. And now our candid 
friend Sixt von .\rnim rejoices the heart of his exceedingly 
clever General Staff by telling them that the thing for them 
to do is to sit at the feet of asinine England and try to do 
as well as she is doing. Isn't it enough to make the largest 
wooden image of Hindenburg sweat out its nails ? " 
" You have recently got rid of your Enghsh Prime 
Minister. Well it mav be a right move — that is, the 
time may now be ripe for it. But he was the man for 
you when the bad time came. His brilliant successor 
has taken on a task of which the back has been broken 
by the less showy man. History will record that that 
solid middle-class" Yorkshireman, "English of the English, 
did more than keep a Government together. He held a 
difiicult country together,' and a Great Alliance. I doubt 
if the Celtic niould would have stood the long strain of 
this great war with the balance and imperturbability of 
that astute calm man. 
" The half-breeds said : ' Lo ! here is the Christ and 
(the next week) there ! ' And he couldn't see it. You 
couldn't make him mo\e in a hurry. And no doubt he 
.mo\-ed (as is the English nature) too slow. But that's 
better than moving too quick and moving wrong ; quite 
an easy thing to do as every nation involved in the great 
war has cause to know. "' Mistakes,' of course. But 
that's how the game's played. Have our mistakes been 
as great, as fundamental as Germany's — the wonderful, 
logical, organised Germany ? Not on your life ! " 
"The war's dealt a sad "blow to logic, I'm sore afraid. 
And I hate to admit it. Look how egregiously wrong the 
logical Professors of Political Economy were wrong. And 
the logical Internationalists." 
';I suppose you couldn't have had a more illogical way 
of making an army than the way you took. But it had 
the supreme practical advantage" that it trained the most 
willing man first, and because he was willing trained him 
fastest — and speed was the determining factor. And 
I'd like to see the logical nation that could have built 
the present British army out of next to nothing in next 
to no time ? An abominably disorderly method and a 
quite incomparable result." 
" And now do you understand why I have such an 
admiration for the geographical Englishman ? It's a 
bitter dav for me, I can tell you. My pride's sorely hum- 
bled. But I am a truthful man— though a lawyer— 
and I have to testify . . . Good morning. If I 
wasn't so dreadfully busy I'd have a long crack over this." 
And that briefiy was why I wore such a broad grin 
on my face when l" stepped into the Inn Gardens, though 
it was a day on which the pessimists were declaring that 
Koumania was done in absolutely. 
For my own heart told me thatMacTavish was right. 
Muddle is (he'only wear— which is to say, if you learn from 
your mistakes. 
Beside:^, T am a geographical Englishman myself. 
