May 2, 1918 
Land & Water 
23 
The Higher Punctuality : By G. K. Chesterton 
SOME time ago, having the honour to write in 
Land & Water, I began my article by comparing 
the toleration of Prussia in Europe, after the war, 
to the presence of a cannibal butcher's shop, hung 
with human bodies, in broad daylight in the streets 
of a modern city. There were some faint or playful protests 
against the goriness of the figure of speech ; but Prussia can 
generally be trusted to turn the most frantic figure into a 
fact. And my own image returned to my imagination when 
I read recently, in a letter from an eye-witness in the villages 
evacuated by the Germans, that he had actually seen the- 
corpse of a young girl hung on one of the hooks outside a 
butcher's shop. It did not, of course, indicate anything so 
useful — we might almost say so excusable — as cannibalism. 
It indicated the deep, true-hearted Teutonic sense of humour ; 
a thing somewhat unique in aesthetics ; a cruelty that is not 
merely dirty, but greasy. And although the image be 
offensive — or, rather, because it is offensive — it is well to 
remember it ; and to repeat, in the plainest terms, what is 
as true in the hour of doubt or danger as it would be in the 
hour of triumph ; that if such things go ultimately uncon- 
demned and unchastised in the European settlement — it will 
be strictly and precisely as if all the busy and peaceful Ufe 
of that little foreign town were resumed, with folk flocking 
to market and to church, but with the fear of the barbarian 
still so heavy upon it that no man dared take down that body 
for decent burial, but all left it to swing and rot in the sun. 
But the position of the Allies, and especially of the 
Americans, permits another practical use for this small 
working model of a common shop, as the scene of a somewhat 
uncommon crime. The point is this : that there would 
certainly be a limit to the extent to which such a crime could 
be concealed or perpetuated by the mere coincidence of 
comings and goings. The corpse could not remain there 
long merely because one policeman passed just before it was 
impaled, and another when the shutters were up, and another 
in a fog, and another in a state of intoxication. If the 
moral sense of that city could ultimately be found to be 
against such an incident, it would also ultimately be found 
in effective combination against it. If there was a universal 
disapproved of crime, men could and would eventually be 
present in sufficient numbers to take down the corpse, and 
hang the butcher instead of the meat. 
Now, that is precisely the position of Prussia in the world 
to-day. It is an ironic position ; and the supremely valu- 
able, but inevitably gradual, arrival of American help is the 
great example of it. The blunder of the withdrawal of 
Russian help is another example of it. I call it a blunder 
because even those who committed it are already calling it a 
blunder. It is a queer paradox that now, while Russia is 
politically most broken to pieces, it is morally much more all 
of a piece again. At least, it is more all of a piece about the 
war. Save for the dubious motives of the Ukraine, it must 
now be almost sohdly anti-German. Old-fashioned patriotic 
Russians must be furious at the loss of their frontiers, and 
new revolutionary Russians equally furious at the fall of 
their barricades. One half of Russia must mourn for glory 
and the national faith, and the other half for freedom and 
the international hop)e. And for both they have to blame 
the Germans. Whether or no they agree that the revolution 
against the Tsar was right, the one thing in which they must 
logically all agree, now, is that the war against the Kaiser 
was right. In other words, they must all agree that they 
were, at least, entirely right to do the one thing that they 
have left off doing. And that is the irony of the present 
position everywhere ; it is not that the feeling of the world 
does not correspond to the cause of the Alhes ; it is simply 
that the facts of the world do not correspond to the feeling 
of the world. And if the whole AUied cause failed now, it 
would be but one huge and brutal blunder in synchrony. 
Failure of synchrony may mean the loss of a battle, 
or even the loss of a campaign ; but I doubt if men 
would ever allow it to mean the final loss of a cause. Napoleon 
might very well have won Waterloo ; England and Prussia 
might not have been ready to join up, just as Austria and 
Russia were not, as a fact, ready to join up ; but Russia and 
Austria, England and Prussia would not have abandoned 
the struggle for that. If the powers of the world were really 
against liim to the last, he could not have conquered finally, 
though Quatre Bras had been more successful than Ligny. 
1 use the parallel, of course, as a small and technical example ; 
and with no reference to the ridiculous though fashionable 
comparison of Napoleon to the North-German mihtarist. 
Napoleon wa"S the heir of noble ideals, and himself a great 
artist ; there is nothing Napoleonic in any sense whatever, 
bad or good, in the stagnant materialism of the Prussian 
mind. As for the present German Emperor, let his sun set 
on St. Helena when it has risen on AusterUtz. The most 
important difference between the old case and the new, 
after the more blazing clarity of the moral issue, would be 
the fact that in the present case we count on our side, not, 
as of old, only antique and mysterious millions of the Russian 
Empire, but the very modem, very quick-witted and equally 
- high-spirited millions of the American Republic. 
American Business Men 
We hear a great deal about the business man in v^ar ; and 
a great deal of it is rubbish. We even hear a great deal 
about the American business man ; and most of it is very 
unjust to the American man, especially that part of it that 
is meant to be complimentary to him. The American is not 
only a genuine democrat, but is generally a genuine idealist. 
Even when he is really too commercial, it is often because he 
idealises commerce. Even when he does kill himself in the 
dollar-hunt, it is less for the dollar and much more for the 
hunt. But the American population does not, as some 
suppose, consist entirely of millionaires. The rest are quite 
civilised people ; indeed, to speak seriously, they are not 
only civilised people, but essentially civic people. The 
average American does truly desire to be a citizen, and not 
merely to be something in the city. Nevertheless, there is 
one virtue of the American citizen which may, without too 
wild a paradox, be described as the virtue of a business man. 
Even in an office life can be lived well ; there are potential 
virtues buried even in business habits ; and one of them is 
highly practical in this connection. Unless my impression of 
American psychology is very far out, the one thing an 
American will not tolerate is this idea of the world civilisation 
coming to an end by accident. He will certainly resent the 
notion that the world's greatest battle should be not so 
much lost as mislaid. He will not easily endure the idea of 
moral and material forces lying disused and derehct, while 
the whole world's story ends wrong for want of them. In 
such a matter he will be inspired, primarily, by an ideal 
which may be called the higher thrift, or even the higher 
punctuality. The General in Bernard Shaw's play says he 
would not hang any gentleman by an American clock ; but 
' the remark would be highly unjust to modern American 
clocks ; and generally to modem American machinery. 
And there is something of which the prompt and impatient 
American intelligence would be highly intolerant, in this 
vision of an almost cosmic collapse ; which is as if the world 
and the planets should cease to turn and the sun should 
tumble out of the sky, merely because one town-clock was 
a httle slow and the other a Uttle fast. 
At this moment the Prussian is more unpopular .in the 
world than he has ever yet been in the war. However few 
or many, in any given place or time, fight against him, all 
men to-day vote against him. The Russians, or Russian 
Jews, who told us to trast him, vote against him ; and 
threaten to fight against him in the future. The Americans, 
who very naturally and rationally wished to be at peace 
with him, vote against him ; and are fighting against him 
with all speed and on the spot. His own Ambassador votes 
against him — over the vexed but vitcd question of the origin 
of the war. His own ally votes against him — over the 
vexed but vital question of the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine. 
Those who would not vote at all vote against him. Those 
who consistently voted for him vote against him. The 
criminal is condemned by all who were not his accompUces, 
and by many who were his accomplices. That he should 
be finally found triumphant in the hour when he is finally 
found giiilty ; that the jury should all bow to his ruUng at 
the very moment when they are all agreed on his crime ; 
that he should suffer exposure and his successful accuser 
should suffer execution ; in short, that we should all of us 
lie for ever undefended from the one thing which we have 
all just found to be indefensible ; and that all this would 
happen, that the judge should be hanged instead of the 
murderer, merely because the American clock kept some- 
what different time from the private watch in the pocket of 
a Jew in Petrograd — all this is something worse or wilder 
than injustice. It is nonsense ; and the Americans, I know, 
will not stand any such nonsense ; nor live in any such 
nightmare for ever. 
