Peace Theories and the Balkan War

CHAPTER IV.

TURK­ISH IDE­ALS IN OUR PO­LIT­ICAL THOUGHT.

This war and “the Turks of Britain and Prus­sia”--The An­glo-​Sax­on and op­posed ide­als--Mr. C. Chester­ton's case for “killing and be­ing killed” as the best method of set­tling dif­fer­ences--Its ap­pli­ca­tion to Civ­il Con­flicts--As in Span­ish-​Amer­ica--The dif­fer­ence be­tween De­von­shire and Venezuela--Will the Balka­ns adopt the Tur­co-​Venezue­lan po­lit­ical ide­als or the British?

An En­glish po­lit­ical writ­er re­marked, on it be­com­ing ev­ident that the Chris­tian States were driv­ing back the Turks: “This is a stag­ger­ing blow to _all_ the Turks--those of Eng­land and Prus­sia as well as those of Turkey.”

But, of course, the British and Prus­sian Turks will nev­er see it--like the Bour­bons, they learn not. Here is a typ­ical­ly mil­itary sys­tem, the work of “born fight­ers” which has gone down in wel­ter be­fore the as­saults of much less mil­itary States, the chief of which, in­deed, has grown up in what Cap­tain von Her­bert has called, with some con­tempt, “stag­nant and en­fee­bling peace con­di­tions,” formed by the peo­ple whom the Turks re­gard­ed as quite un­fit to be made in­to war­riors; whom they re­gard­ed much as some Eu­ro­peans re­gard the Jews. It is the Chris­tian pop­ula­tions of the Balka­ns who were the traders and work­ers--those brought most un­der eco­nom­ic in­flu­ences; it was the Turks who es­caped those in­flu­ences. A few years since, I wrote: “If the con­queror prof­its much by his con­quest, as the Ro­mans in one sense did, it is the con­queror who is threat­ened by the en­er­vat­ing ef­fect of the soft and lux­uri­ous life; while it is the con­quered who are forced to labour for the con­queror, and who learn in con­se­quence those qual­ities of steady in­dus­try which are cer­tain­ly a bet­ter moral train­ing than liv­ing up­on the fruits of oth­ers, up­on labour ex­tort­ed at the sword's point. It is the con­queror who be­comes ef­fete, and it is the con­quered who learn dis­ci­pline and the qual­ities mak­ing for a well-​or­dered State.”

Could we ask a bet­ter il­lus­tra­tion than the his­to­ry of the Turk and his Chris­tian vic­tims? I ex­em­pli­fied the mat­ter thus: "If dur­ing long pe­ri­ods a na­tion gives it­self up to war, trade lan­guish­es, the pop­ula­tion los­es the habit of steady in­dus­try, gov­ern­ment and ad­min­is­tra­tion be­come cor­rupt, abus­es es­cape pun­ish­ment, and the re­al sources of a peo­ple's strength and ex­pan­sion dwin­dle. What has caused the rel­ative fail­ure and de­cline of Span­ish, Por­tuguese, and French ex­pan­sion in Asia and the New World, and the rel­ative suc­cess of En­glish ex­pan­sion there­in? Was it the mere haz­ards of war which gave to Great Britain the dom­ina­tion of In­dia and half of the New World? That is sure­ly a su­per­fi­cial read­ing of his­to­ry. It was, rather, that the meth­ods and pro­cess­es of Spain, Por­tu­gal, and France were mil­itary, while those of the An­glo-​Sax­on world were com­mer­cial and peace­ful. Is it not a com­mon­place that in In­dia, quite as much as in the New World, the trad­er and the set­tler drove out the sol­dier and the con­queror? The dif­fer­ence be­tween the two meth­ods was that one was a pro­cess of con­quest, and the oth­er of col­oniz­ing, or non-​mil­itary ad­min­is­tra­tion for com­mer­cial pur­pos­es. The one em­bod­ied the sor­did Cob­den­ite idea, which so ex­cites the scorn of the mil­itarists, and the oth­er the lofty mil­itary ide­al. The one was par­asitism; the oth­er co-​op­er­ation....

“How may we sum up the whole case, keep­ing in mind ev­ery em­pire that ev­er ex­ist­ed--the As­syr­ian, the Baby­lo­ni­an, the Mede and Per­sian, the Mace­do­nian, the Ro­man, the Frank, the Sax­on, the Span­ish, the Por­tuguese, the Bour­bon, the Napoleon­ic? In all and ev­ery one of them we may see the same pro­cess, which is this: If it re­mains mil­itary it de­cays; if it pros­pers and takes its share of the work of the world it ceas­es to be mil­itary. There is no oth­er read­ing of his­to­ry.”

But de­spite these very plain lessons, there are many amongst us who re­gard phys­ical con­flict as the ide­al form of hu­man re­la­tion­ship; “killing and be­ing killed” as the best way to de­ter­mine the set­tle­ment of dif­fer­ences, and a so­ci­ety which drifts from these ide­als as on the high road to de­gen­er­ation, and who deem those who set be­fore them­selves the ide­al of abol­ish­ing or at­ten­uat­ing pover­ty for the mass of men, “low and sor­did.”

Thus Mr. Ce­cil Chester­ton[5]:

In essence Mr. An­gell's query is: “Should usurers go to war?”

I may say, in pass­ing, that I am not clear that even on the ques­tion thus raised Mr. An­gell makes out his case. His case, broad­ly stat­ed, is that the net of “Fi­nance”--or, to put it plain­er, Cos­mopoli­tan Usury--which is at present spread over Eu­rope would be dis­as­trous­ly torn by any con­sid­er­able war; and that in con­se­quence it is to the in­ter­est of the usurers to pre­serve peace. But here, it seems to me, we must make a clear dif­fer­en­ti­ation. It may eas­ily be to the in­ter­est of a par­tic­ular usurer, or group of usurers, to pro­voke war; that very fi­nan­cial cri­sis which Mr. An­gell an­tic­ipates may quite prob­ably be a source of prof­it to them. That it would not be to the in­ter­est of a na­tion of usurers to fight is very prob­able. That such a na­tion would not fight, or, if it did, would be ex­ceed­ing­ly bad­ly beat­en, is cer­tain. But that on­ly serves to raise the fur­ther ques­tion of whether it is to the ul­ti­mate ad­van­tage of a na­tion to re­pose up­on usury; and whether the break­ing of the net of usury which at present un­ques­tion­ably holds Eu­rope in cap­tiv­ity would not be for the ad­van­tage, as it would clear­ly be for the hon­our, of our race.... The sword is too sa­cred a thing to be pros­ti­tut­ed to such dirty pur­pos­es. But whether he suc­ceeds or fails in this at­tempt, it will make no dif­fer­ence to the mass of plain men who, when they fight and risk their lives, do not do so in the ex­pec­ta­tion of ob­tain­ing a cer­tain in­ter­est on their cap­ital, but for quite oth­er rea­sons.

Mr. An­gell's lat­est ap­peal comes, I think, at an un­for­tu­nate mo­ment. It is not mere­ly that the Balkan States have re­fused to be con­vinced by Mr. An­gell as to their chances of com­mer­cial prof­it from the war. It is that if Mr. An­gell had suc­ceed­ed to the fullest ex­tent in con­vinc­ing them that there was not a quar­ter per cent. to be made out of the war, nay, that--hor­ri­ble thought!--they would ac­tu­al­ly be poor­er at the end of the war than at the be­gin­ning, they would have gone to war all the same.

Since Mr. An­gell's ar­gu­ment clear­ly ap­plies as much or more to civ­il as to in­ter­na­tion­al con­flicts, I may per­haps be al­lowed to turn to civ­il con­flicts to make clear my mean­ing. In this coun­try dur­ing the last three cen­turies one sol­id thing has been done. The pow­er of Par­lia­ment was pit­ted in bat­tle against the pow­er of the Crown, and won. As a re­sult, for good or evil, Par­lia­ment re­al­ly is stronger than the Crown to-​day. The pow­er of the mass of the peo­ple to con­trol Par­lia­ment has been giv­en as far as mere leg­is­la­tion could give it. We all know that it is a sham. And if you ask what it is that makes the dif­fer­ence of re­al­ity be­tween the two cas­es, it is this: that men killed and were killed for the one thing and not for the oth­er.

I have no space to de­vel­op all that I should like to say about the in­di­rect ef­fects of war. All I will say is this, that men do judge, and al­ways will judge, things by the ul­ti­mate test of how they fight. The Ger­man vic­to­ry of forty years ago has pro­duced not on­ly an as­ton­ish­ing ex­pan­sion, in­dus­tri­al as well as po­lit­ical of Ger­many, but has (most dis­as­trous­ly, as I think) in­fect­ed Eu­rope with Ger­man ideas, es­pe­cial­ly with the idea that you make a na­tion strong by mak­ing its peo­ple be­have like cat­tle. God send that I may live to see the day when vic­to­ri­ous armies from Gaul shall shat­ter this il­lu­sion, burn up Prus­sian­ism with all its Po­lice Reg­ula­tions, In­sur­ance Acts, Poll Tax­es, and in­sults to the poor, and re­assert the Re­pub­lic. It will nev­er be done in any oth­er way.

If ar­bi­tra­tion is ev­er to take the place of war, it must be backed by a cor­re­spond­ing ar­ray of phys­ical force. Now the ques­tion im­me­di­ate­ly aris­es: Are we pre­pared to arm any In­ter­na­tion­al Tri­bunal with any such pow­ers? Per­son­al­ly, I am not.... Turn back some fifty years to the great strug­gle for the eman­ci­pa­tion of Italy. Sup­pose that a Hague Tri­bunal had then been in ex­is­tence, armed with co­er­cive pow­ers. The dis­pute be­tween Aus­tria and Sar­dinia must have been re­ferred to that tri­bunal. That tri­bunal must have been guid­ed by ex­ist­ing treaties. The Treaty of Vi­en­na was per­haps the most au­thor­ita­tive ev­er en­tered in­to by Eu­ro­pean Pow­ers. By that treaty, Venice and Lom­bardy were un­ques­tion­ably as­signed to Aus­tria. A just tri­bunal ad­min­is­ter­ing in­ter­na­tion­al law _must_ have de­cid­ed in favour of Aus­tria, and have used the whole armed force of Eu­rope to co­erce Italy in­to sub­mis­sion. Are those Paci­fists, who try at the same time to be Democrats, pre­pared to ac­qui­esce in such a con­clu­sion? Per­son­al­ly, I am not.

I replied as fol­lows:

Mr. Ce­cil Chester­ton says that the ques­tion which I have raised is this: “Should usurers go to war?”

That, of course, is not true. I have nev­er, even by im­pli­ca­tion, put such a prob­lem, and there is noth­ing in the ar­ti­cle which he crit­icis­es, nor in any oth­er state­ment of my own, that jus­ti­fies it. What I have asked is whether peo­ples should go to war.

I should have thought it was pret­ty ob­vi­ous that, what­ev­er hap­pens, usurers do not go to war: the peo­ples go to war, and the peo­ples pay, and the whole ques­tion is whether they should go on mak­ing war and pay­ing for it. Mr. Chester­ton says that if they are wise they will; I say that if they are wise they will not.

I have at­tempt­ed to show that the pros­per­ity of peo­ples--by which, of course, one means the diminu­tion of pover­ty, bet­ter hous­es, soap and wa­ter, healthy chil­dren, lives pro­longed, con­di­tions suf­fi­cient­ly good to en­sure leisure and fam­ily af­fec­tion, fuller and com­pleter lives gen­er­al­ly--is not se­cured by fight­ing one an­oth­er, but by co-​op­er­ation and labour, by a bet­ter or­gan­isa­tion of so­ci­ety, by im­proved hu­man re­la­tion­ship, which, of course, can on­ly come of bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the con­di­tions of that re­la­tion­ship, which bet­ter un­der­stand­ing means dis­cus­sion, ad­just­ment, a de­sire and ca­pac­ity to see the point of view of the oth­er man--of all of which war and its phi­los­ophy is the nega­tion.

To all of this Mr. Chester­ton replies: “That on­ly con­cerns the Jews and the mon­eylen­ders.” Again, this is not true. It con­cerns all of us, like all prob­lems of our strug­gle with Na­ture. It is in part at least an eco­nom­ic prob­lem, and that part of it is best stat­ed in the more ex­act and pre­cise terms that I have em­ployed to deal with it--the term's of the mar­ket-​place. But to im­ply that the con­di­tions that there ob­tain are the af­fair mere­ly of bankers and fi­nanciers, to im­ply that these things do not touch the lives of the mass, is sim­ply to talk a non­sense the mean­ing­less­ness of which on­ly es­capes some of us be­cause in these mat­ters we hap­pen to be very ig­no­rant. It is not main­ly usurers who suf­fer from bad fi­nance and bad eco­nomics (one may sug­gest that they are not quite so sim­ple); it is main­ly the peo­ple as a whole.

Mr. Chester­ton says that we should break this “net of usury” in which the peo­ples are en­meshed. I agree hearti­ly; but that net has been wo­ven main­ly by war (and that di­ver­sion of en­er­gy and at­ten­tion from so­cial man­age­ment which war in­volves), and is, so far as the debts of the Eu­ro­pean States are con­cerned (so large an el­ement of usury), al­most sole­ly the out­come of war. And if the peo­ples go on pil­ing up debt, as they must if they are to go on pil­ing up ar­ma­ments (as Mr. Chester­ton wants them to), giv­ing the best of their at­ten­tion and emo­tion to sheer phys­ical con­flict, in­stead of to or­gan­isa­tion and un­der­stand­ing, they will mere­ly weave that web of debt and usury still clos­er; it will load us more heav­ily and stran­gle us to a still greater ex­tent. If usury is the en­emy, the rem­edy is to fight usury. Mr. Chester­ton says the rem­edy is for its vic­tims to fight one an­oth­er.

And you will not fight usury by hang­ing Roth­schilds, for usury is worst where that sort of thing is re­sort­ed to. Widespread debt is the out­come of bad man­age­ment and in­com­pe­tence, eco­nom­ic or so­cial, and on­ly bet­ter man­age­ment will rem­edy it. Mr. Chester­ton is sure that bet­ter man­age­ment is on­ly ar­rived at by “killing and be­ing killed.” He re­al­ly does urge this method even in civ­il mat­ters. (He tells us that the pow­er of Par­lia­ment over the Crown is re­al, and that of the peo­ple over Par­lia­ment a sham, “be­cause men killed and were killed for the one, and not for the oth­er.”) It is the method of Span­ish Amer­ica where it is ap­plied more frankly and log­ical­ly, and where still, in many places, elec­tions are a mil­itary af­fair, the ques­tions at is­sue be­ing set­tled by killing and be­ing killed, in­stead of by the cow­ard­ly, paci­fist meth­ods cur­rent in Eu­rope. The re­sult gives us the re­al­ly mil­itary civil­isa­tions of Venezuela, Colom­bia, Nicaragua, and Paraguay. And, al­though the En­glish sys­tem may have many de­fects--I think it has--those de­fects ex­ist in a still greater de­gree where force “set­tles” the mat­ters in dis­pute, where the bul­let re­places the bal­lot, and where bay­onets are re­sort­ed to in­stead of brains. For De­von­shire is bet­ter than Nicaragua. Re­al­ly it is. And it would get us out of none of our trou­bles for one group to im­pose its views sim­ply by pre­pon­der­ant phys­ical force, for Mr. Asquith, for in­stance, in the true Cas­tro or Zuyala man­ner, to an­nounce that hence­forth all crit­ics of the In­sur­ance Act are to be shot, and that the present Cab­inet will hold of­fice as long as it can de­pend up­on the sup­port of the Army. For, even if the coun­try rose in re­bel­lion, and fought it out and won, the suc­cess­ful par­ty would (if they al­so be­lieved in force) do ex­act­ly the same thing to _their_ op­po­nents; and so it would go on nev­er-​end­ing­ly (as it has gone on dur­ing weary cen­turies through­out the larg­er part of South Amer­ica), un­til the two par­ties came once more to their sens­es, and agreed not to use force when they hap­pened to be able to do so; which is our present con­di­tion. But it is the con­di­tion of Eng­land mere­ly be­cause the En­glish, as a whole, have ceased to be­lieve in Mr. Chester­ton's prin­ci­ples; it is not yet the con­di­tion of Venezuela be­cause the Venezue­lans have not yet ceased to be­lieve those prin­ci­ples, though even they are be­gin­ning to.

Mr. Chester­ton says: “Men do judge, and al­ways will judge, by the ul­ti­mate test of how they fight.” The pi­rate who gives his blood has a bet­ter right, there­fore, to the ship than the mer­chant (who may be a usurer!) who on­ly gives his mon­ey. Well, that is the view which was all but uni­ver­sal well in­to the pe­ri­od of what, for want of a bet­ter word, we call civil­isa­tion. Not on­ly was it the ba­sis of all such in­sti­tu­tions as the or­deal and du­el; not on­ly did it jus­ti­fy (and in the opin­ion of some still jus­ti­fies) the wars of re­li­gion and the use of force in re­li­gious mat­ters gen­er­al­ly; not on­ly was it the ac­cept­ed na­tion­al poli­ty of such com­mu­ni­ties as the Vikings, the Bar­bary States, and the Red In­di­ans; but it is still, un­for­tu­nate­ly, the poli­ty of cer­tain Eu­ro­pean states. But the idea is a sur­vival and--and this is the im­por­tant point--an ad­mis­sion of fail­ure to un­der­stand where right lies: to “fight it out” is the rem­edy of the boy who for the life of him can­not see who is right and who is wrong.

At ten years of age we are all quite sure that pira­cy is a fin­er call­ing than trade, and the pi­rate a fin­er fel­low than the Shy­lock who owns the ship--which, in­deed, he may well be. But as we grow up (which some of the best of us nev­er do) we re­alise that pira­cy is not the best way to es­tab­lish the own­er­ship of car­goes, any more than the or­deal is the way to set­tle cas­es at law, or the rack of prov­ing a dog­ma, or the Span­ish Amer­ican method the way to set­tle dif­fer­ences be­tween Lib­er­als and Con­ser­va­tives.

And just as civ­il ad­just­ments are made most ef­fi­cient­ly, as they are in Eng­land (say), as dis­tinct from South Amer­ica, by a gen­er­al agree­ment not to re­sort to force, so it is the En­glish method in the in­ter­na­tion­al field which gives bet­ter re­sults than that based on force. The re­la­tion­ship of Great Britain to Cana­da or Aus­tralia is prefer­able to the re­la­tion­ship of Rus­sia to Fin­land or Poland, or Ger­many to Al­sace-​Lor­raine. The five na­tions of the British Em­pire have, by agree­ment, aban­doned the use of force as be­tween them­selves. Aus­tralia may do us an in­jury--ex­clude our sub­jects, En­glish or In­di­an, and ex­pose them to in­sult--but we know very well that force will not be used against her. To with­hold such force is the ba­sis of the re­la­tion­ship of these five na­tions; and, giv­en a cor­re­spond­ing de­vel­op­ment of ideas, might equal­ly well be the ba­sis of the re­la­tion­ship of fif­teen--about all the na­tions of the world who could pos­si­bly fight. The dif­fi­cul­ties Mr. Chester­ton imag­ines--an in­ter­na­tion­al tri­bunal de­cid­ing in favour of Aus­tria con­cern­ing the re­ces­sion of Venice and Lom­bardy, and sum­mon­ing the forces of Unit­ed Eu­rope to co­erce Italy in­to sub­mis­sion--are, of course, based on the as­sump­tion that a Unit­ed Eu­rope, hav­ing ar­rived at such un­der­stand­ing as to be able to sink its dif­fer­ences, would be the same kind of Eu­rope that it is now, or was a gen­er­ation ago. If Eu­ro­pean state­craft ad­vances suf­fi­cient­ly to sur­ren­der the use of force against neigh­bour­ing states, it will have ad­vanced suf­fi­cient­ly to sur­ren­der the use of force against un­will­ing provinces, as in some mea­sure British states­man­ship has al­ready done. To raise the dif­fi­cul­ty that Mr. Chester­ton does is much the same as as­sum­ing that a court of law in San Domin­go or Turkey will give the same re­sults as a court of law in Great Britain, be­cause the form of the mech­anism is the same. And does Mr. Chester­ton sug­gest that the war sys­tem set­tles these mat­ters to per­fec­tion? That it has worked sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly in Ire­land and Fin­land, or, for the mat­ter of that, in Al­ba­nia or Mace­do­nia?

For if Mr. Chester­ton urges that killing and be­ing killed is the way to de­ter­mine the best means of gov­ern­ing a coun­try, it is his busi­ness to de­fend the Turk, who has adopt­ed that prin­ci­ple dur­ing four hun­dred years, not the Chris­tians, who want to bring that method to an end and adopt an­oth­er. And I would ask no bet­ter ex­am­ple of the ut­ter fail­ure of the prin­ci­ples that I com­bat and Mr. Chester­ton de­fends than their fail­ure in the Balkan Penin­su­la.

This war is due to the vile char­ac­ter of Turk­ish rule, and the Turk's rule is vile be­cause it is based on the sword. Like Mr. Chester­ton (and our pi­rate), the Turk be­lieves in the right of con­quest, “the ul­ti­mate test of how they fight.” “The his­to­ry of the Turks,” says Sir Charles El­liott, “is al­most ex­clu­sive­ly a cat­alogue of bat­tles.” He has lived (for the most glo­ri­ous­ly un­eco­nom­ic per­son has to live, to fol­low a trade of some sort, even if it be that of theft) on trib­ute ex­act­ed from the Chris­tian pop­ula­tions, and ex­tort­ed, not in re­turn for any work of ad­min­is­tra­tion, but sim­ply be­cause he was the stronger. And that has made his rule in­tol­er­able, and is the cause of this war.

Now, my whole the­sis is that un­der­stand­ing, work, co-​op­er­ation, ad­just­ment, must be the ba­sis of hu­man so­ci­ety; that con­quest as a means of achiev­ing na­tion­al ad­van­tage must fail; that to base your pros­per­ity or means of liveli­hood, your eco­nom­ic sys­tem, in short, up­on hav­ing more force than some­one else, and ex­er­cis­ing it against him, is an im­pos­si­ble form of hu­man re­la­tion­ship that is bound to break down. And Mr. Chester­ton says that the war in the Balka­ns de­mol­ish­es this the­sis. I do not agree with him.

The present war in the Balka­ns is an at­tempt--and hap­pi­ly a suc­cess­ful one--to bring this reign of force and con­quest to an end, and that is why those of us who do not be­lieve in mil­itary force re­joice.

The de­bater, more con­cerned with ver­bal con­sis­ten­cy than re­al­ities and the es­tab­lish­ment of sound prin­ci­ples, will say that this means the ap­proval of war. It does not; it mere­ly means the choice of the less evil of two forms of war. War has been go­ing on in the Balka­ns, not for a month, but has been waged by the Turks dai­ly against these pop­ula­tions for 400 years.

The Balkan peo­ples have now brought to an end a sys­tem of rule based sim­ply up­on the ac­ci­dent of force--“killing and be­ing killed.” And whether good or ill comes of this war will de­pend up­on whether they set up a sim­ilar sys­tem or one more in con­so­nance with paci­fist prin­ci­ples. I be­lieve they will choose the lat­ter course; that is to say, they will con­tin­ue to co-​op­er­ate be­tween them­selves in­stead of fight­ing be­tween them­selves; they will set­tle dif­fer­ences by dis­cus­sion, ad­just­ment, not force. But if they are guid­ed by Mr. Chester­ton's prin­ci­ple, if each one of the Balkan na­tions is de­ter­mined to im­pose its own es­pe­cial point of view, to refuse all set­tle­ment by co-​op­er­ation and un­der­stand­ing, where it can re­sort to force--why, in that case, the strongest (pre­sum­ably Bul­gar­ia) will start con­quer­ing the rest, start im­pos­ing gov­ern­ment by force, and will lis­ten to no dis­cus­sion or ar­gu­ment; will sim­ply, in short, take the place of the Turk in the mat­ter, and the old weary con­test will be­gin afresh, and we shall have the Turk­ish sys­tem un­der a new name, un­til that in its turn is de­stroyed, and the whole pro­cess be­gun again _da capo_. And if Mr. Chester­ton says that this is not his phi­los­ophy, and that he would rec­om­mend the Balkan na­tions to come to an un­der­stand­ing, and co-​op­er­ate to­geth­er, in­stead of fight­ing one an­oth­er, why does he give dif­fer­ent coun­sels to the na­tions of Chris­ten­dom as a whole? If it is well for the Balkan peo­ples to aban­don con­flict as be­tween them­selves in favour of co-​op­er­ation against the com­mon en­emy, why is it ill for the oth­er Chris­tian peo­ples to aban­don such con­flict in favour of co-​op­er­ation against their com­mon en­emy, which is wild na­ture and hu­man er­ror, ig­no­rance and pas­sion.

[Foot­note 5: From “Ev­ery­man” to whose Ed­itor I am in­debt­ed for per­mis­sion to print my re­ply.]