Author's Preface - Page 2

good things (and I am
magnanimous enough to admit that they are not altogether bad
things when taken in strict moderation at the right time and
in the right place), he indulges in them on all occasions
shamelessly and excessively. He commits hideous crimes when crime
is presented to him as part of his duty; his craze for work is
more ruinous than the craze for drink; when he can afford
secondary education for his sons you find three out of every five
of them with their minds lamed for life by examinations which
only a thoroughly wooden head could go through with impunity; and
if a king is patriotic and respectable (few kings are) he puts up
statues to him and exalts him above Charlemagne and Henry the
Fowler. And when he meets a man of genius, he instinctively
insults him, starves him, and, if possible, imprisons and kills
him.

Now I do not pretend to be perfect myself. Heaven knows I have to
struggle hard enough every day with what the Germans call my higher
impulses. I know too well the temptation to be moral, to be
self-sacrificing, to be loyal and patriotic, to be respectable and
well-spoken of. But I wrestle with it and--as far as human fraility
will allow--conquer it, whereas the German abandons himself to it
without scruple or reflection, and is actually proud of his pious
intemperance and self-indulgence. Nothing will cure him of this
mania. It may end in starvation, crushing taxation, suppression of
all freedom to try new social experiments and reform obsolete
institutions, in snobbery, jobbery, idolatry, and an omnipresent
tyranny in which his doctor and his schoolmaster, his lawyer and
his priest, coerce him worse than any official or drill sergeant:
no matter: it is respectable, says the German, therefore it must
be good, and cannot be carried too far; and everybody who rebels
against it must be a rascal. Even the Social-Democrats in Germany
differ from the rest only in carrying academic orthodoxy beyond
human endurance--beyond even German endurance. I am a Socialist
and a Democrat myself, the hero of a hundred platforms, one of the
leaders of the most notable Socialist organizations in England. I am
as conspicuous in English Socialism as Bebel is in German Socialism;
but do you suppose that the German Social-Democrats tolerate me? Not
a bit of it. I have begged again and again to be taken to the bosom
of my German comrades. I have pleaded that the Super-Proletarians
of all lands should unite. I have pointed out that the German
Social-Democratic party has done nothing at its Congresses for the
last ten years except the things I told them to do ten years before,
and that its path is white with the bones of the Socialist
superstitions I and my fellow Fabians have slain. Useless.