The Garden and the Machine
John Buchan compared how the Germans and the British understood their empires, and saw two very different pictures indeed.
1923
King George V 1910-1936
John Buchan compared how the Germans and the British understood their empires, and saw two very different pictures indeed.
1923
King George V 1910-1936
John Buchan explains why the German Empire took the risk of engaging the British Empire in the Great War. The risk did not seem very serious, because the British had let their colonies become so independent and decentralised that London had no way to make them fight. And that was where the Germans made their mistake.
BRITAIN, in German eyes, had not the vitality to organize her territories for a common purpose. The view was natural, for to Germany empire meant a machine, where each part was under the exact control of a central power. To her local autonomy seemed only a confession of weakness, and the bonds of kinship an idle sentiment.
The British conception of empire, on the other hand, was the reverse of mechanical. She believed that the liberty of the parts was necessary to the stability of the whole, and that her Empire, which had grown “as the trees grow while men sleep,” was a living organism far more enduring than any machine. She had blundered often, but had never lost sight of the ideals of Burke and Chatham.* She had created a spiritual bond
“Which, softness’ self, is yet the stuff
To hold fast where a steel chain snaps.”*
By the gift of liberty she had made the conquered her equals and her allies, and the very men she had fought and beaten became in her extremity her passionate defenders.
* Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was MP for Bristol and a severe though constructive critic of British policy in India during the time when our interests there were wholly in the hands of the East India Company, a government-backed agency. See The Bond of Liberty. William Pitt the Elder (1708-1778), 1st Earl of Chatham, was Prime Minister in 1757-61 and 1766-68. Especially after his time in office, he was admired for his stirring speeches and defence of the peculiarly British understanding of liberty. See posts tagged William Pitt the Elder.
* Taken from ‘What’s Become of Waring?’ by Robert Browning (1812-1889), a humorous verse lamenting the decision of Alfred Domett to emigrate to New Zealand in 1841. Browning imagines the absconded ‘Waring’ in Moscow, hobnobbing with the Tsar and his snuff-taking generals; their sashes are the soft stuff stronger than steel.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.