18 - Short History of England by G. K. Chesterton

In Short History of England, Gilbert Keith Chesterton offers a captivating exploration of history through the lens of human interaction, framing it as an enduring struggle between civilization and barbarism. His insightful critique reveals the stark contrast between the narratives of recent centuries and the rich tapestry of the medieval era, which is often overlooked in popular histories. Chesterton‚As sharp intellect and mastery of paradox illuminate the absurdities in conventional arguments, making his reflections both thought-provoking and entertaining. This is not just a study of dates and events; it is a profound journey that challenges modern misconceptions while remaining relevant to today‚As world. (Summary by Ray Clare)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. A Short History of England by G. K. Chesterton,
Chapter eighteen. Conclusion, in so small a book, one so

(00:32):
large a matter, finished hastily enough amid the necessities of
an enormous national crisis. It would be absurd to pretend
to have achieved proportion, But I will confess to some
attempt to correct a disproportion. We talk of historical perspective,
but I rather fancy there is too much perspective in history,

(00:54):
or perspective makes a giant topigmy and epigmy a giant.
Last is a giant foreshortened with his feet towards us,
and sometimes the feet are of clay. We see too
much merely the sunset of the Middle Ages, even when
we admire its colors, And the study of a man

(01:15):
like Napoleon is too often that of the last phase.
So there is a spirit that thinks it reasonable to
deal in detail with old sarum, and would think it
ridiculous to deal in detail with the use of saram
or which erects in Kensington gardens, a golden monument to Elbert,

(01:35):
larger than anybody has ever erected to Alfred. English history
is misread, especially, I think, because the crisis is missed.
It is usually put about the period of the Stuarts,
and many of the memorials of our past seem to
suffer from the same visitation as the memorial of mister Dick.

(01:56):
But though the story of the Stewarts was a tragedy,
I think it was also an epilogue. I make the guess,
for it can be no more that the change really
came with the fall of Richard Scond following on his
failure to use medieval despotism in the interests of medieval democracy. England,

(02:18):
like the other nations of Christendom, had been created not
so much by the death of the ancient civilization as
by its escape from death, or by its refusal to die.
Medieval civilization had arisen out of the resistance to the barbarians,
to the naked barbarianism from the north and the more
subtled barbarianism from the east. It increased in liberties and

(02:42):
local government under kings who controlled the wider things of
war and taxation, and in the Peasant War of the
fourteenth century in England, the king and the populace came
for a moment into conscious alliance. They both found that
a third thing was already too strong for them. That
third thing was the aristocracy, and it captured and called

(03:05):
itself the Parliament. The House of Commons, as its name implies,
had primarily consisted of plain men summoned by the king,
like jurymen, but it soon became a very special jury.
It became, for good or evil, a great organ of government,
surviving the Church, the monarchy, and the mob. It did

(03:26):
many great and not a few good things. It created
what we call the British Empire. It created something which
was really far more valuable, a new and natural sort
of aristocracy, more humane and even humanitarian than most of
the aristocracies of the world. It had sufficient sense of

(03:48):
the instincts of the people, at least until lately, to
respect the liberty and especially the laughter that had become
almost a religion of the race. But in doing all
this it deliberately did to other things which it thought
a natural part of its policy. It took the side
of the Protestants, and then, partly as a consequence, it

(04:11):
took the side of the Germans. Until very lately most
intelligent Englishmen were quite honestly convinced that in both he
was taking the side of progress against decay. The question
which many of them are now inevitably asking themselves, and
would ask, whether I asked it or no, is whether
it did not rather take the side of barbarianism against civilization,

(04:38):
at least if there be anything valid in my own
vision of these things. We have returned to an origin,
and we are back in the war with the barbarians.
It falls as naturally for me that the Englishmen and
the Frenchman should be on the same side, as that
Alfred and Ebbo should be on the same side in

(05:00):
in that Black century when the barbarians wasted Wessex and
besieged Paris. But there are now perhaps less certain tests
of the spiritual as distinct from the material victory of civilization.
Ideas are more mixed or complicated by fine shades or
covered by fine names. And whether the retreating savage leaves

(05:24):
behind him the soul of savagery like a sickness in
the air, I myself should judge primarily by one political
and moral test, the soul of savagery is slavery under
all its mask of machinery and instruction. The German regimentation
of the poor was the relapse of barbarians into slavery.

(05:47):
I can see no escape from it ourselves in the
ruts of our present reforms, but only by doing what
the Medievals did after the other barbarian defeat, begin by
guilds and small independent groups gradually to restore the personal
property of the poor and the personal freedom of the family.

(06:09):
If the English really attempts that the English have at
least shown in the war to anyone who doubted it,
that they have not lost the courage and capacity of
their fathers, and can carry us through if they will.
If they do not do so, if they continue to

(06:30):
move only with the dead momentum of the social discipline
which we learned from Germany, there is nothing before us
but what mister Bella, the discoverer of this great sociological drift,
has called the servile state. And there are moods in
which a man, considering that conclusion of our story, is

(06:53):
half inclined to wish that the wave of Teutonic barbarism
had washed out us and our armies together and that
the world should never know anything more of the last
of the English, except that they died for liberty. The
end of chapter eighteen, the end of A Short History

(07:16):
of England,