But I do not criticise such a Commission except for one most practical and urgent purpose.  It will be answered to me that the first Kind of Man of whom I spoke could not really be on boards and committees, as modern England is managed.  His dirt, though necessary and honourable, would be offensive:  his speech, though rich and figurative, would be almost incomprehensible.  Let us grant, for the moment, that this is so.  This Kind of Man, with his sooty hair or sanguinary adjectives, cannot be represented at our committees of arbitration.  Therefore, the other Kind of Man, fairly prosperous, fairly plausible, at home at least with the middle class, capable at least of reaching and touching the upper class, he must remain the only Kind of Man for such councils.

Very well.  If then, you give at any future time any kind of compulsory powers to such councils to prevent strikes, you will be driving the first Kind of Man to work for a particular master as much as if you drove him with a whip.

THE MEDIAEVAL VILLAIN

I see that there have been more attempts at the whitewashing of King John.

But the gentleman who wrote has a further interest in the matter; for he believes that King John was innocent, not only on this point, but as a whole.  He thinks King John has been very badly treated; though I am not sure whether he would attribute to that Plantagenet a saintly merit or merely a humdrum respectability.

I sympathise with the whitewashing of King John, merely because it is a protest against our waxwork style of history.  Everybody is in a particular attitude, with particular moral attributes; Rufus is always hunting and Coeur-de-Lion always crusading; Henry VIII always marrying, and Charles I always having his head cut off; Alfred rapidly and in rotation making his people’s clocks and spoiling their cakes; and King John pulling out Jews’ teeth with the celerity and industry of an American dentist.  Anything is good that shakes all this stiff simplification, and makes us remember that these men were once alive; that is, mixed, free, flippant, and inconsistent.  It gives the mind a healthy kick to know that Alfred had fits, that Charles I prevented enclosures, that Rufus was really interested in architecture, that Henry VIII was really interested in theology.

And as these scraps of reality can startle us into more solid imagination of events, so can even errors and exaggerations if they are on the right side.  It does some good to call Alfred a prig, Charles I a Puritan, and John a jolly good fellow; if this makes us feel that they were people whom we might have liked or disliked.  I do not myself think that John was a nice gentleman; but for all that the popular picture of him is all wrong.  Whether he had any generous qualities or not, he had what commonly makes them possible, dare-devil courage, for instance, and hotheaded decision.  But, above all, he had a morality which he broke, but which we misunderstand.