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International Political Economy Series

American Hegemony
after the Great Recession

A Transformation in World Order

Brandon Tozzo
 International Political Economy Series

Series editor
Timothy M. Shaw
Visiting Professor
University of Massachusetts
Boston, USA

and

Emeritus Professor at the University of London, UK

The global political economy is in flux as a series of cumulative crises
impacts its organization and governance. The IPE series has tracked
its development in both analysis and structure over the last three dec-
ades. It has always had a concentration on the global South. Now the
South increasingly challenges the North as the centre of development,
also reflected in a growing number of submissions and publications on
indebted Eurozone economies in Southern Europe. An indispensable
resource for scholars and researchers, the series examines a variety of cap-
italisms and connections by focusing on emerging economies, companies
and sectors, debates and policies. It informs diverse policy communities
as the established trans-Atlantic North declines and ‘the rest’, especially
the BRICS, rise.

More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/13996
 Brandon Tozzo

American Hegemony
after the Great
Recession
A Transformation in World Order
Brandon Tozzo
Trent University
Peterborough
PE, Canada

International Political Economy Series

ISBN 978-1-137-57538-8 ISBN 978-1-137-57539-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57539-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017940215

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 Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge numerous people for their support

throughout this project. This project has been in the making for a long
time, with much of it influenced by my dissertation work at Queen’s
University in Kingston, Ontario. In particular, I would like to thank my
supervisor Phillip Wood who guided me throughout my research and
offered hours of advice on a wide array of academic and non-academic
issues. I am certainly a better student, writer, researcher and teacher
thanks to his supervision. I would also like to acknowledge my col-
leagues at the Political Studies Department at Trent University for their
support during the project. I am also grateful to my students, especially
those in my American politics class, who always keep me thinking and
regularly challenge my assumptions about the USA.
I would like to thank Timothy Shaw and the editors at Palgrave
Macmillian for their time, patience and help in this project. Writing a
book was quite an undertaking and it would have been impossible with-
out their assistance.
I would also like to thank the United States Department of State for
admitting me into the US Visitor’s Leadership Program during the 2016
US states federal election. It was an experience of a lifetime to conduct
interviews in Washington, D.C., Louisiana and Ohio during the height
of the election season. I experienced the election of Donald Trump at
the Republican headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio—an event I will never
forget. It was a rare honour for an academic to be selected and the one I
will treasure.

v
vi Acknowledgements

Thanks go to my long-time friends Dorian Mills and Robbyn Lindsay

in London, Ontario for their moral support. I would like to recognize an
incalculable debt to my family, Joseph and Jill Tozzo, Eleanor Hobden,
Jamie and Kyra Ellington and Graham Tozzo. Without the love from my
friends and family this would not have been possible. Finally, I would
like to acknowledge my wife Jenna Willoughby for her years of love and
patience as I went through this process.
 Contents

1 An American Crisis; A Global Recession 1

2 The Great Wars and the Post-war Consensus 1914–1979 13

3 The Neoliberal Orthodoxy 1979–2000 43

4 A Crisis in the European Union 65

5 The Demographic and Economic Problems of China 79

6 American Political Polarization and the Rise of Trump 93

7 The Coming Global Crisis 127

Bibliography 135

Index 153

vii
 CHAPTER 1

An American Crisis; A Global Recession

Since the end of the Second World War, the USA has been the dominant
capitalist country in the international system. It has been central to the
expansion of businesses into new markets and into new territories. While
America has relied upon incentives, it also has at its disposal the most
advanced military in the world to ensure the stability of the capitalist
system. During the financial crisis of 2008, the USA was the source of
crises, with the financial contagion spreading to the rest of the global
economy. Since then, this superpower has been mired in poor economic
growth with its political system seemingly unable to contend with these
new problems. A relatively minor crisis in the American housing market
has had far-reaching and dire ramifications in seeming unrelated parts of
the world. The problems quickly spread to the Eurozone, which could
soon be on the verge of collapse due to a series of sovereign debt crises.
Even in East Asia, China has taken measures to ensure the continuity of
its regime and the country’s continued economic growth. The recession
has highlighted that capitalism is a global system that interconnects dis-
parate countries and peoples. And yet after all these difficulties with mas-
sive unemployment and an increase in poverty, reform of the financial
system remains tentative and difficult. The costs of the crisis are borne
by some of the poorest people, while investors and corporations receive
tax cuts and government bailouts. Even the USA, the largest economy
in the world, seemed unable to mitigate the effects of the recession.
The purpose of this book will be twofold: first, to explain the historical
development of the financial system as a political project that conditions

© The Author(s) 2018 1

B. Tozzo, American Hegemony after the Great Recession, International Political
Economy Series, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57539-5_1
2 B. TOZZO

the response of political leaders to the Great Recession that began in

2007. Contrary to the Great Depression where a series of new domes-
tic and institutional arrangements have been put in place, the outcome
of the Great Recession was to reinforce the international status quo, with
America remaining dominant (Helleiner 2014). While the power and
influence of the financial industry is a contributing factor, there are far
more complicated reasons for the inaction. In each region, the responses
to the recession have been inhibited by the limitations of institutional
arrangements dictating a series of policies, on the one hand, and pressure
from financial markets and the financial industry to maintain the financial-
ization of the system, on the other. In the immediate wake of the crisis,
there was considerable political will to reshape the international financial
system, but as the immediacy faded, orthodoxy remained, despite years of
tepid economic growth in most OECD countries.
Secondly, and most critically, this book will intervene in a debate on
the future of American hegemony. The response of the USA to the crisis
has developed a contradiction: the main threat to American hegemony is
not from the global capitalist system, nor from foreign competitors, but
its political system. Since the Second World War, the USA has been the
hegemon of the international capitalist system—promoting free trade,
market liberalism and a central player in many international institutions.
Polarization is common in American politics. The American public is
divided on a wide array of social and economic issues: whether the state
should promote school prayer, women’s access to abortion, the role of
government in health care and same-sex marriage. While each of these
issues is significant in their own right, they have not had global ramifica-
tions. Since the onset of the Great Recession conflict has expanded into
areas that were previously non-politicized or where there was cross-party
consensus. With an increasingly ideologically divided Congress, the rise
of the Tea Party, and the success of Donald Trump in 2016, Americans
are now seriously debating whether the USA should remain committed to
global free trade and open markets, and whether America should continue
to maintain its role in institutions like NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization). However, despite the politics, the USA currently has low
unemployment, decreasing budget deficits and a booming stock market.
Compared to other countries, the USA has come out the Great Recession
in a stronger position than its major contenders. My analysis is not that
America lacks the economic resources or policy tools to manage contra-
dictions in capitalism or international crisis, but, the crisis has shown the
 1 AN AMERICAN CRISIS; A GLOBAL RECESSION 3

American political system is becoming increasingly unwilling due to poli-

tics. To put the overall thesis of this book succinctly, the greatest threat to
American hegemony and the stability of global capitalism in the twenty-
first century is America.
I will also provide an analysis of the major challengers on an interna-
tional stage to American hegemony in order to show that they suffer from
significant institutional, political and economic problems. In Europe, the
institutional framework of the EU and the Euro has constrained both
wealthier northern countries and the economically weak south. While the
economic crisis in Southern European countries is abated through loans,
along with austerity measures, politically, there is little popular will to
increase the political unity of Europe. On the contrary, years of recession, a
migration crisis from the Middle East and the rise of right-wing nationalist
parties have made many Europeans far more sceptical of “Project Europe”.
The Recession has shown the fissures within the European Union, along
geographic lines. In 2016, Britain voted for a “Brexit” from the European
Union, and while the details have yet to be worked out, this is a worrying
sign for future integration in Europe. It continues to be unlikely Europe
will be able to seriously contend with the USA as a unified global super-
power in the near future.
The other major contender that many expect to compete with the
USA is one of its largest trading partners: China. While the country has
experienced a dramatic economic transformation since it began opening
in the late 1970s, China now faces a series of new problems as it tries
to move from a middle-income country and “go global” (Shambaugh
2013). Certainly, the rapid development of China and other countries
such as India and Brazil represents a shift in regional power towards
these new, growing economies, but as of yet they lack the military
or economic capacity to challenge the USA as a dominant actor on a
global stage (Christensen and Xing 2016). China faces a series of eco-
nomic, social, demographic and political problems that have under-
mined the optimism about its ascendency as a Superpower. The driving
force behind China’s policy prior to and during the recession has
been due to its demographics. China must keep its economy growing
in order for the regime to keep its legitimacy, thus it has kept buying
American and even European debt to ensure global economic stability.
Yet, there remain numerous questions about China’s long-term stability
and capacity for economic growth. Its domestic housing sector is over-
valued in certain markets, while its stock market crashed in mid-2015
4 B. TOZZO

and has yet to recover. Furthermore, there are numerous social factors
that could undermine its stability, including its ageing population plac-
ing pressure on the state, its demographic disparity between men and
women due to China’s One Child Policy, and dramatic unrest among
its working population. Institutionally, the capacity of the Chinese
Communist Party to maintain its control over the country is the case a
protracted recession remains an open question, but at least several years
on, it appears premature to suggest China has the capabilities to match,
or overtake, the USA.
In the wake of crisis, there have been two major schools of thought
on the future of the USA as the dominant country in the global capital-
ist system. The first group of so-called declinists, which include Zakaria
(2009), Ferguson (2011), Friedman and Mandelbaum (2012), Bremmer
(2012), Panitch and Gindin (2012), argue that American power is in
relative or absolute decline, either due to foreign competitors or due to
contradictions in capitalism. The “anti-declinist” group, which include
Helleiner (2014), Vermeiren (2014), Prasad (2014) argue that America’s
decline is overstated. The USA remains a politically stable, economically
affluent and militarily dominant country despite the recent protracted
recession. While this book firmly belongs in the anti-declinist school of
thought, it makes a significant observation that differs from the other
scholars by examining the role of domestic politics on the long-term
prospects of American hegemony.
The book will balance a comprehensive overview of the changes in the
international economy since the recession with the domestic policies of
each major region. It will provide an analysis of the globalization of the
international economy: how global finance in particular no longer has
political boundaries, but is transnational in scope. This book will evalu-
ate how each region has responded to the crisis and offer some criticisms
and policy suggestions based on what has been successful and where
there have been failures.
I will rely on a series of distinct literature throughout this book that
will help to examine the global economy as a whole and the domes-
tic factors in each case study, borrowing much from the International
Political Economy and Comparative Political Economy literature. In
Chaps. 3 and 4, I will assess the problems in international capitalism
that started just prior to the Great Depression, as well as the major reor-
ganization of the international system that occurred after the Second
World War. The interwar period was the most recent time there was a
 1 AN AMERICAN CRISIS; A GLOBAL RECESSION 5

hegemonic vacuum in global politics. Britain had declined as a Great

Power, and the USA was constrained by domestic institutions which
prevented it from participating in European affairs and in the League of
Nations. Then, I will evaluate the major economic and geopolitical con-
flicts of the Cold War, including the Korean and Vietnam wars. From
there in Chap. 2, I will examine the origins of the decline of the Bretton
Woods system of capital control and the rise of the neoliberalism in the
1980s. It will also outline the origins of the globalization of finance in
the 1970s, which accelerated during the 1980s and 1990s. It will briefly
discuss the periodic crisis caused by the financialization of the system,
such as the peso crisis, the Southeast Asian crisis and the dot-com bub-
ble. This will be followed by a discussion of the opening of the Chinese
economy, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. By the 1990s, America
was the lone superpower and neoliberal capitalism was popularized as
the only path to economic prosperity.
In the year 2000, America was booming, China had joined the
World Trade Organization, and countries in Europe adopted the Euro.
However, shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001,
problems started to arise. The USA began to accumulate massive deficits
in the War on Terror, provided by Chinese financing. Countries opposed
the US war in Iraq. Yet, the global economy for the most prospered due
to low inflation, high growth, fuelled by debt, and cheap borrowing. By
2007, the USA entered a recession due to collapsing housing prices. By
the summer of 2008, firms such as Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers
began to show signs of trouble. In September 2008, the US government
decided to let Lehman Brothers fail, leading to a massive crisis in the
global financial system. I will spend time discussing the causes of the crisis
and the ramifications of it for the USA, the Eurozone and China. Initially
governments throughout the G20 united in a coordinated response to
the crisis, introducing stimulus packages and targeted bailouts. After the
worst of the crisis abated, the response of each region began to differ in
policies towards the recession.
The approach I will use recognizes that capitalism is a systemic and
totalizing force, but that it must be discussed in its historical context to be
appropriately understood. It is even more pertinent at this time when capi-
talism is in crisis and the developed world is mired in recession. Moreover,
this section will reference the mainstream International Relations (IR),
Comparative Political Economy (CPE) and the International Political
Economy (IRE) literature. Scholars in mainstream IR often argue the
6 B. TOZZO

America promotes international stability, free markets and political liberal-

ism; it is often viewed as benevolent, progressive and necessary in global
politics.1 IPE often integrates production and the capitalist system in their
analysis, but shares a number of assumptions with IR, emphasizing the
actions of the US government as the main agent that spreads capitalism.2
The focus of these chapters will be a re-examination of the USA using
Marxian analysis as a theoretical guide.
Chapter 4 will examine the Eurozone crisis and its ramifications for
Europe’s place as a potential competing superpower. The economic crisis
has led to a series of bailouts from national governments. Since 2008,
there has been a considerable increase in sovereign debt in the PIIGS
(Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain). Prior to the recession, many
of these economies could borrow cheaply, but now international con-
fidence has turned against them. Although the crisis is economic, the
limitations of the Euro limit the policy responses from national govern-
ments. Essentially, the PIIGS must undergo painful austerity measures as
a condition of bailouts rather than lowering the price of their currency or
inflating their way out of debt. The problems with Eurozone are institu-
tional. Though there are methods to overcome the crisis, they are com-
plicated by the institutional structure of the EU.
The 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent recession have highlighted
the problems associated with trying to develop a common currency for
a region as varied as the Eurozone. The 17 countries that use the Euro
are bound by treaty commitments to abide by the policies set out by the
European Central Bank (ECB), which sets interest rates for the Eurozone.
Nonetheless, a true fiscal union does not exist between EU member-states.
Guidelines do exist to limit overall debt-to-GDP ratios and curtail annual
deficit spending, but the enforcement mechanism for these rules is weak,
and is often disregarded by the more powerful countries in the EU.3 At
the national level, each country sets its own budget, allocates its resources
according to its own priorities and accumulates its own sovereign debt. This
has led to high degree of incoherence in European policy, as well as sparking
a crisis between prudent northern European countries and the spendthrift
south. In contrast their northern counterparts, Mediterranean governments
chose to borrow cheaply using the favourable interest rates that they gained
through the adoption of the Euro.
As a result of this borrowing and the crisis, a major sovereign debt crisis
has occurred in Portugal, Italy, Ireland Greece and Spain (PIIGS), all of
which, with the exception of Ireland, accumulated high levels of debt in
 1 AN AMERICAN CRISIS; A GLOBAL RECESSION 7

the years prior to 2008. So far, it is the Greek economy that has teetered
closest to a full default, reaching an unsustainable 140% debt-to-GDP ratio
in 2011.4 Financial markets, sensing that Greece is unable to carry such a
large debt given the size of its economy fled Greek bonds, driving up bor-
rowing costs. In response, Germany, France and the IMF have provided
ad hoc bailouts through the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF)
in order to prevent a default that could undermine the Euro and lead to
a broader crisis in the Eurozone. But despite receiving billions of Euros
in aid, Greek 10 year bond yields remain high, indicating a low degree of
investor confidence in Greece’s long-term economic prospects.5 This is
partially due to the unpopularity of the austerity measures demanded by
Germans in return for bailouts. The situation has deteriorated to the point
where German and French leaders have started to openly discuss the pos-
sibility of an orderly default, in recognition that Greece is too deeply in
debt to ever pay back investors. The lack of central control over fiscal policy
has led to disparate responses to the crisis. The wealthy countries of the
north do not want to burden their citizens with supranationalizing the debt
through the extensive use of Eurobonds, nor do they want to lower the
debt burdens through inflationary policies. Thus, growth remains anaemic
and periodic bailouts remain the orthodox policy due to the institutional
limitations of the Euro.
To compound the problems, a variety of nationalist movements
across Europe have gained popularity. Countries like Austria, Hungary
and Poland have experienced a dramatic increase in the support for par-
ties that promote nationalist or neo-fascist agendas. Even in France—a
country at the hub of the European project—support for the National
Front has increased both due the economic problems associated with the
Great Recession and domestic racial tensions along with terrorist attacks.
Similarly, in Britain, the Conservatives party made a promise to hold a
referendum on its continued role in the European Union as a method to
appease supporters of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).
When the referendum was held, the exit side narrowly pulled off a vic-
tory and will have to negotiate some form of an exit from the EU. While
Britain has a history of Euroscepticism, this trend appears to be occur-
ring across Europe, undermining the EU’s unity and capabilities should
another economic crisis occur.
The next chapter will continue by discussing the role of China.
Although out of all the major regions China appears to have come out
of the recession with few economic problems, underlying a seemingly
8 B. TOZZO

assertive China is a self-conscious regime and a highly corrupt politi-

cal and economic system. China has gone through 30 years of integra-
tion into the international economic system. It is now a hub of low-cost
manufacturing for American companies. Many were expecting the reces-
sion to be the start of a newly assertive China emerging on the inter-
national scene. Indeed, it seemed the twenty-first century would belong
to China. However, the regime has only participated in incremental
domestic and international reforms. The central issue limiting China’s
advance is demographic. The regime must keep economic growth for
fear a legitimacy crisis due to poor economic growth. The Chinese econ-
omy must absorb 30 million new workers every year into its major cities.
Also, leading up to the recession China’s relatively poor social security
system means workers save a large portion of their income, leading to
lower global interest rates. These factors prevent China from undergoing
substantive economic reforms. It has to keep investing in American debt
for fear that lower American consumption will negatively impact Chinese
job growth. The nearly two trillion of debt owned by China has limited
its policy options. If it tries to sell off its assets slowly, it will undermine
confidence in the remaining US debt the Chinese government holds.
Furthermore, any major recession in the USA will lower American con-
sumption of Chinese-made goods. China’s financial system and labour
market is now dependent on US growth and economic stability.
Moreover, despite considerable improvements in living standards,
China remains a poor country that must grapple with a range of domes-
tic and regional challenges before it can hope to compete with America
for pre-eminence. Yet again, China’s difficulties are mainly demographic.
Even after two decades of exponential growth, the Chinese economy is
still less than one-third of the size of its American counterpart,6 despite
the fact that China’s population is over four times larger than that of the
USA. In China, domestic challenges have taken the form of a series of
social pathologies that include rampant inequality, a greying population
and an unbalanced gender ratio. Even though China has had an impres-
sive level of economic growth in recent years, it must be kept in mind
that, despite its growing prosperity, it is still a very poor country. Much
of the population has been untouched by its rapid economic develop-
ment. The bulk of China’s workforce remains poor, especially in the
countryside. In fact, the high level of economic inequality between
rural and urban workers has led to concern that the Chinese economy
is becoming “Latin Americanized”, or extremely economically unequal.
 1 AN AMERICAN CRISIS; A GLOBAL RECESSION 9

Given the depth of these problems, it is unclear whether the government

has the political or economic resources to deal with any or all of these
issues.
Chapter 6 will change pace and build upon the earlier chapters by
examining the response to the recession and the political polarization in
the USA. I will provide an account of America’s government structure
and political culture. I will also discuss how its foreign policy has been
motivated by both geopolitical threats and the interests of corporations
and financial institutions. With the rise of neoliberalism in the 1970s,
financial markets and corporations emerged as a major transnational force
in the international system that overcame the boundaries and regula-
tory limitations of most nation-states. Most of the time, the relationship
between the US government and global finance has been cooperative.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the American government often yielded to the
demands of finance capital by providing bailouts to prevent a broader sys-
temic crisis in capitalism.
This chapter will continue the discussion of the American reaction to
the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, the resulting wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, and the after effects of the 2008 financial crisis. There
were tensions between the American state, corporations, and financial
markets due to the war in Iraq and the financial crisis. The subsequent
Great Recession of the late 2000s was experienced differently in the USA,
the EU and China due to the unevenness of the global capitalist system.
Initially, President Barack Obama brought the promise of substantial
change in the USA from the previous administration of George W. Bush.
Yet very little has changed. The Obama Administration did not substan-
tially regulated finance capital—if it is even possible for a single state to do
so—nor has he radically altered US military policy in the Middle East and
other regions. Global finance has shown throughout the global economy
that it has the ability to condition the response of countries, punishing
those that act contrary to the demands of investors.
While it is too soon to see the long-term economic ramifications of the
recession on the USA, this crisis does show that America is under many con-
straints and suffers limitations due to its political system. America can benefit
from the development international capitalism, particularly in the financiali-
zation of the system, but it can also be punished by financial markets. In
the post 2008 election, the Democrats had control of the Whitehouse and
Congress. Although Obama passed a bailout package, both Republican
opposition and the Tea Party began to limit the policy options available. In
10 B. TOZZO

the wake of 2010 midterms, the Republicans are in control the House of
Representatives, with a sizable portion of the caucus part of the Tea Party.
The opposition from the House has prevented major policy initiatives
from the Obama administration. Republican opposition has almost led to
another global financial crisis. In the summer of 2011, the USA nearly went
into default on its debt, due to the inability of the government to agree to
raise the debt ceiling. This chapter will highlight the polarization of the
American political system as the main reason reform of the financial sys-
tem is unlikely to be substantive. It will also discuss the subsequent rise
of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and the right-wing
populist backlash against the Republican and Democratic establish-
ment. Rather than a political exception, Trump represents a rejection of
America’s role as hegemon and the USAs’ continued support for the very
institutions that are the cornerstone of the international world order.
The final chapter will discuss the consequences of inaction, polariza-
tion and anger by providing a series of prescriptions. The liberalization of
the financial system has led to a protracted economic crisis in America and
the Eurozone, and even China’s economic system shows signs of troubles.
Despite some stability in the global economy, the recovery remains fragile
and any number of issues could lead to another crisis. Political polariza-
tion in the USA could lead to series of bank failures, or America could sim-
ply default on its debt, leading to a global economic catastrophe. Trump’s
presidency could undermine long-standing institutions, like NAFTA and
NATO. The Eurozone is far from stable—a sovereign default of Italy or
Spain could have far-reaching consequences. As well, China’s economic
system is rife with corruption and favouritism. There have been widespread
fears of a housing bubble in major cities that could undermine China’s
economic growth and political stability. Any of these issues, or indeed all of
them, could jeopardize the stability of the global economy and make a pro-
tracted economic slump into a much longer and more serious depression.
This, however, does not have to be the case. There are reforms that
could be undertaken—some simple others more serious—that could
prevent another crisis from occurring. In the USA, political reforms of
its electoral system and the regulation of campaign finance could lessen
the effects of polarization. A US government not limited by factional
infighting could provide leadership to reform its financial sector and
potentially global economic system. In Europe, countries either have to
supranationalize, providing more fiscal authority to the EU or radically
reform the member-states tied to the Euro. As is, the forced austerity
 1 AN AMERICAN CRISIS; A GLOBAL RECESSION 11

measures as part of the conditions for periodic bailouts are having delete-
rious effects on both the economies of Europe’s south and their political
stability. China’s demographic problems are more structural and difficult
from a policy perspective, but the negative effects of can be ameliorated.
First, its economy needs further reform. The nexus between state-owned
enterprises and the Communist Party has led to widespread corruption,
there needs to be a clearer separation between business and the govern-
ment. Also, China’s government could provide more services to the poor
though changes to its social insurance system. Although it would be
expensive, it would lessen the discrepancy between rich and power and
lower the savings rate since many in China have to provide for their old
age and medical bills. Obviously some political reform would be desir-
able, but as of yet, it remains improbable compared to other, more read-
ily achievable policies.
There are several overall goals for this book. First, my work will con-
tribute to a growing body of the literature on the Great Recession.
However, where this book differs is that it offers a broader examina-
tion of the crisis. My examination will not just look at institutions, but
on the politics that can either challenge or underwrite the very institu-
tions that keep global order. Also, I will examine the complex intersec-
tions of a variety of approaches. I will appropriate the critical literature to
examine the global economy as a whole, but from there I will delve into
the literature on polarization to evaluate the American case, the institu-
tional literature for the Eurozone and work on demographics in China.
Capitalism is a decentralized system of accumulation that breaks down
spatial and political boundaries in search of profit, but along the way it
has to deal with domestic, contingent factors.7 So while it would be sim-
pler to focus on the political apparatus or on the capitalist system, each
side represents two interlinked determinants.

Notes
1. Charles Kindleberger. The World in Depression 1929–1939 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1973): 2.
2. Bryan Mabee “Discourses of Empire: The US ‘Empire’, Globalisation and
International Relations”. Third World Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 8 (2004): 1361.
3. Ibid., 118.
4. The Economist, “The euro area’s debt crisis”, The Economist. (12 January
2011): http://www.economist.com/node/17902709.
12 B. TOZZO

5. BBC Business News, “Euro falls on rumours Greece is to quit the

Eurozone”, BBC News Magazine (7 May 2011): http://www.bbc.co.uk/
news/business-13317770.
6. The World Bank estimates China’s nominal GDP at $4.5 trillion, making
it a fraction of America’s $14.1 trillion annual output, CIA Worldfactbook,
Country Comparison: GDP—per capita (PPP), Central Intelligence
Agency. Washington, D.C. (July 2010): https://www.cia.gov/library/
publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html?countryNam
e=China&countryCode=ch&regionCode=eas&rank=126#ch.
7. David Harvey. Limits to Capital (London; New York: Verso, 2006).
 CHAPTER 2

The Great Wars and the Post-war Consensus

1914–1979

Throughout the twentieth century, there have been contradictions in

capitalism that have reached the point of crisis. This chapter will exam-
ine the historical determinants behind the Great Depression in the 1930s,
the period of stagflation during the 1970s and the Great Recession that
began in 2008. This chapter will set the stage by discussing the founda-
tions of American hegemony and the establishment and collapse of the
Bretton Woods system of finance. It will begin by discussing the economic
and political chaos of the post-WWI era. A remarkable feature of the time
was the political unwillingness of the USA to play a key role in European
affairs, particularly in the League of Nations after the First World War. The
failures of the interwar years are many: a global depression and the failure
of the USA and European powers to prevent another catastrophic global
conflict. In the wake of the worst war in human history, the USA along
with its allies forged a new economic and political order—the Bretton
Woods system which regulated the flows of finance and promoted free
trade and open markets. However, as I will elaborate upon in greater
detail by the late 1960s, contradictions began to arise in the post-war con-
sensus. By the 1970s, the Bretton Woods system began to be dismantled
by the USA before being fully rejected in the Reagan-Thatcher era. This
chapter will conclude just prior to election of Margaret Thatcher in Britain
1979 and Ronald Reagan as US President in 1980 and the ramifications
of their election will be explored in more detail in Chap. 3.
A goal of these next two chapters is to show how events cannot be
abstracted from their historical and social context. For example, the

© The Author(s) 2018 13

B. Tozzo, American Hegemony after the Great Recession, International Political
Economy Series, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57539-5_2
14 B. TOZZO

recent recession has far-reaching historical roots, dating back to policy

decisions made by President Roosevelt during the 1930s. Although
these chapters place emphasis on the USA, they will also discuss trans-
formations in the broader global system. I will examine how changes in
capitalism can, at times, emerge gradually before leading to a broader
transformation in the entire system, most recently evident in the rise of
neoliberalism in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Although neoliberal-
ism is often attributed to the policies of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald
Reagan, as I will show, quantitative changes had begun to occur by the
late 1960s in the capitalist system, leading to experimentation in places
like Chile. The qualitative global transformation to neoliberalism did not
occur suddenly, but took nearly 20 years to become orthodox in most
Western countries. Even still, there remains a great deal of tension both
within and between governments over economic policy and distribution.
Technological changes also had an impact on the political and social
changes that occurred due to major innovations in production and
finance, such as air transportation technology and the Internet. At the
same time, these innovations are not always progressive, but can lead
to new forms of opposition in the system, such as global terrorist net-
works like Al-Qaeda. These technological advances have linked govern-
ments and economies together at a historically unprecedented level.
Furthermore, a fundamental methodological distinction of this analysis
is its focus on determinants rather than absolute causes of processes. It
avoids generalizations that abstract phenomena from their history and
context and will discuss concepts as open-ended, requiring contextualiza-
tion to understand their meaning.

Lessons from the Great Depression

This section will outline the contradiction in capitalism that occurred in
the 1930s, and the inadequate response of the USA to manage the ensu-
ing crisis. This was a period of a high degree of international instability
due to the recent experience of the First World War. Although the USA
was a major economic power, it had not yet become the hegemon of the
capitalist system, but instead had an ad hoc role in managing periodic eco-
nomic and political crises. Also European countries had become reliant on
American loans to ensure their economic stability. Without financing from
the USA, the German government was unable to pay its reparations. When
the crisis hit, the reluctance of Washington to properly mitigate the crisis,
 2 THE GREAT WARS AND THE POST-WAR CONSENSUS 1914–1979 15

the limitations of the gold standard, as well as an already weakened global

economy led to a decade-long depression.
One of the determining factors of the depression was the inability of
a potentially hegemonic country, the USA, to organize a coordinated
response to a crisis in capitalism. The “victors” of the First World War,
France and Britain, were economically bankrupt having spent most of
their resources fighting the Central Powers.1 Moreover, the war left Russia
in the middle of a civil war. Two defeated empires, Austria-Hungary and
the Ottoman Empire, were partitioned along national lines into a series
of new countries. For the Germans, the Treaty of Versailles required
financial reparation payments (although under relatively flexible terms),
as well as recognition that the Central Powers caused the conflict.2 The
only state that could reorganize the system and take a hegemonic posi-
tion was the USA. Due to the massive costs of the First World War for
Britain, America had become the international financial hub of the global
economy as well as its main lender.3 The USA had the potential to take
over the role of Britain as hegemon of the capitalist system. Germany
defaulted on repaying its reparations in 1924 leading to hyperinflation.
In response, Washington took a leadership role providing loans through
the Dawes Plan. Republicans in the USA were sceptical about intervening
in European affairs, having previously prevented America’s entrance into
the League of Nations. However, the economic hardship in the heart of
Europe, the Americans provided access to financial assets so that Germany
could repay its debts to Britain and France, which helped alleviate post-
war tensions. This had two significant economic and political implications
for the interwar years: it provided the Germans a period of stability, and it
made European prosperity dependent upon the American economy. Thus,
when the USA entered a period of crisis in 1929, it had repercussions
throughout Europe and the global economy.
In the 1920s, there was a large amount of speculation on Wall Street
as many Americans borrowed money in order to invest in the booming
stock market. By 1928, the American Federal Reserve recognized that
the stock market was crowding out investment in other productive areas
and decided to raise interest rates to stem bank loans.4 In October 1929,
the speculative bubble burst. In two days, the stock market lost nearly
30% of its value.5 Many investors could no longer repay their bank loans
due to the abrupt decline. But rather than a minor downturn, the stock
market did not rebound to its pre-1929 level until the early 1950s.6
Banks were over-leveraged due to the generous loans they provided,
16 B. TOZZO

partially to the German government, and could not pay back their depos-
its.7 This resulted in a series of bank runs throughout the USA as citizens
worried their savings would be lost due to the collapsing banking system.
The liquidity crunch made it difficult for both businesses and individu-
als to obtain loans, leading to a dramatic decline in employment as the
demand for goods and agricultural products collapsed.8 Unemployment
increased dramatically from 3% in 1929 to 25% by the end of 1930.9
With the entire American economy on the verge of collapse, the US gov-
ernment under the Republican Herbert Hoover started to intervene in
order to alleviate the crisis.
However, the policies of the American government worsened an
already precarious economic situation. In response to the banking crisis,
the Federal Reserve cut interest rates, but this proved to be an inadequate
measure to stem bank failures.10 The banking system was already far too
weakened for a reduction of interest rates alone to resolve the crisis. In
1930 and 1931, the American government could not prevent them from
failing, with over 900 banks closing in total at a loss of billions of dollars
of deposits.11 The problem became cyclical: as banks failed, people lost
their faith in the financial system, and as people were no longer willing
to deposit in banks the situation further deteriorated. Moreover, federal
government spending remained constant—there was no fiscal stimulus
in order to counteract the collapse in demand and purchasing power,
nor bailouts of major financial institutions.12 To make the situation even
worse, in 1930, Congress enacted a series of taxes on imported goods
with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.13 This was intended to bolster the
domestic market, but the tariffs closed off markets for American exports
as countries retaliated by increasing their own tariffs. Both as a result of
the collapse in demand and new tariffs, world trade collapsed from $5.3
billion in 1929 to $1.3 billion by 1933 (figures in 1933 US dollars).14
The failure of the Federal Reserve and the US government to respond
appropriately to the crisis led a downturn on Wall Street to become a
widespread global depression.
Another major determinant of the depression was the gold standard,
which proved to be a major constraint on government spending. The
inflation that followed the First World War led France, the USA, Germany
and the UK to return to the gold in order to provide financial stability.15
Germany in particular had experienced a period of hyperinflation after
the First World War due to the inability of its government to pay its war
reparations. By fixing the value of a currency to gold, the system heavily
 2 THE GREAT WARS AND THE POST-WAR CONSENSUS 1914–1979 17

restricted the growth in the money supply by allowing domestic and

foreign investors to transfer their money to gold.16 During the interwar
years, investors had the ability to undermine a country’s financial system if
a government tried to devalue its currency or undertook long-term defi-
cit spending. The gold standard led to competition between countries as
investors could easily move their assets due to the international acceptance
of gold.17 After the Wall Street crash and subsequent bank failures, the
gold standard ended up being a major contributor to deflation. It pre-
vented governments from injecting liquidity in order to prevent bank fail-
ures or using protracted deficit spending in order to shore up demand.
But more importantly, the gold standard prevented governments from
coordinating economic policy and contributed to rising international ten-
sion brought on by the depression.
The gold standard proved to be significant—it restricted governments
intervention in the economy and a determinant of the depression. By the
late 1920s, there had been a substantial increase in economic inequality in
the USA. After the war, it became politically difficult to tax the wealthy,
and the gold standard made it impossible for countries to engage in defi-
cit spending to promote economic equality. By 1929, the top 1% owned
30% of all household wealth, a level that was not reached again until the
1990s.18 Unlike Britain during the pre-war period, the US government
refused to take a leadership role to coordinate c­ountries to alleviate the
depression. The USA undermined economic cooperation by introduc-
ing tariffs in order to protect domestic industries. America’s trading
partners responded by enacting a series of “beggar-thy-­neighbour” poli-
cies to promote their own industries, undermining global free trade and
global economic growth. Internationally, America was willing to finance
loans to Europe as long as its own economy was growing, but when the
depression hit the entire system collapsed. The Germans depended upon
American financing in order to finance their post-WWI reparation pay-
ments through the Dawes Plan.19 By cutting off the money, the crisis
to Europe. In Germany, this led to a massive economic depression with
unemployment reaching over 25% and GDP contracting by nearly 30% by
1932.20 The depression fuelled the rise of radicalism throughout the West
and contributed to the rise of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party to power in 1933.
In the USA, the depression led to the election of Franklin Roosevelt
in 1932 with the support of labour unions, farmers, Southern whites and
minorities. Roosevelt promised to reinvigorate the economy and provide
relief for the unemployed. His administration began the New Deal which
18 B. TOZZO

introduced a series of social programs and industrial planning through

the National Recovery Act, and the Wagner Act which promoted unioni-
zation.21 Roosevelt was sympathetic to the plight of the working class
and the poor. However, his administration faced opposition from corpo-
rate and financial interests:

the growth of (noncompany) unions threatened capitalist prerogatives

in the workplace, and the disproportionate expansion of industrial as
opposed to craft unions united broader sectors of industrial labour than at
any previous period in U.S. history. Capitalists (with very few exceptions)
regarded all of this as threatening and believed that the federal government
was encouraging labour… whose results were not fully predictable or nec-
essarily controllable.22

American investors and corporate owners were worried about the amount
of power unions gained from Roosevelt’s government, fearing that it
would undermine profitability and challenge private property. Under
Roosevelt’s tenure, unions took an unprecedented amount of power in
collective bargaining. Furthermore, the social programs introduced by
Roosevelt expanded the role of government in the economy, providing
old-age pensions, unemployment relief, infrastructure projects, and farm
subsidies.23 The federal government tried to combat the deflationary spi-
ral of the Great Depression through job creation programs. Despite the
opposition from a variety of capitalists, Roosevelt began to reorganize the
American economy in order to decrease economic inequality and lower
unemployment through the creation of a welfare system.
Much to the disappointment of domestic and international financi-
ers, Congress passed legislation to regulate the American financial sys-
tem. In order to prevent further bankruptcies, the Glass-Steagall Act of
1933 was signed into law. The act founded the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation (FDIC)—this was intended to return confidence to the bank-
ing system through a government guarantee that deposits would be safe.24
More consequentially, the Act put in place a firm legal barrier between
commercial and investment banking.25 Commercial banks were restricted
to day-to-day banking, small loans and mortgages while investment
banks could trade stocks and bonds. The general purpose was to limit the
exposure of people’s savings—now insured by the government—from
the fluctuations of the stock market.26 It prevented bankers from using
higher interest rates to attract deposits, and then using that money to
 2 THE GREAT WARS AND THE POST-WAR CONSENSUS 1914–1979 19

invest in risky business ventures. Roosevelt also started to introduce incen-

tives to increase home ownership by insuring mortgages for people with
low down payments (though this program was only available to whites),
which was later turned into a formal institution the Federal National
Mortgage Association or Fannie Mae.27 Roosevelt’s reforms meant nearly
every aspect of the financial system had some form of government over-
sight, whether in the form of insurance or regulation. In order to enforce
these regulations, the federal government established the Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC) to ensure that corporations followed the
new laws to give accurate information to investors. The overall aim of the
new legislation was to prevent problems related to the Great Depression
from recurring and to restore confidence in the economy.
Many industrialists and investors worried that capitalism itself would
soon be threatened by the “radical” reforms of the Roosevelt administra-
tion.28 Initially, the New Deal was met with resentment from moneyed
interests in America, to the point of tentatively plotting his overthrow in a
failed coup attempt to replace the president with Major General Smedley
Butler.29 Yet Roosevelt was far from a revolutionary even by the stand-
ards of the era. Countries throughout Europe were becoming even more
extreme, either adopting fascism or communism. Roosevelt’s New Deal
was a reformist attempt to preserve and regulate American capitalism in
order to save the system by preventing the radicalization of the working
class and the poor. Regardless of the policies that empowered the work-
ing class, Roosevelt was still constrained by the American political and
economic system. During the early phases of the New Deal, the Supreme
Court ruled that several programs, such as the National Recovery
Act, were unconstitutional, and after 1938 a conservative coalition of
Republicans and Democrats held the majority of seats in Congress.30
Moreover, due to the inability of the USA to coordinate with Britain and
France, even the widespread abandonment of the gold standard between
1933 and 1936 did little to strengthen the global economy.31 Roosevelt’s
financial reforms were intended to return confidence to the free market
rather than alter its role. Though the New Deal may have seemed radi-
cal by the standards of the USA in the 1930s, Roosevelt’s policies offered
only incremental change to deal with the economic hardships brought on
by the Great Depression.
In the area of fiscal policy, the New Deal did not offer the stimulus
required to deal with unemployment or to stabilize the financial sys-
tem. In 1932, Roosevelt had campaigned calling for “the one sound
20 B. TOZZO

foundation of permanent economic recovery—a complete and honest

balancing of the federal budget”.32 A return to balanced budgets was
orthodox thinking at the time. Roosevelt’s administration was reluc-
tant to increase taxes on the wealthy in order to pay for wider economic
distribution, which limited government spending and redistribution
efforts.33 Roosevelt became president 3 years before Keynes’ views were
popularized in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.
Keynes argued governments must produce deficits in times of hard-
ship in order to boost aggregate demand to return the economy to full
employment.34 Once in office Roosevelt introduced several new social
programs, but the federal debt remained constant throughout the 1930s
at around 40% of GNP.35 This brought down unemployment, but it
still remained high compared to the pre-depression era. The New Deal
pushed unemployment down from its height of 25% in 1933 to 15% in
1937.36 Even these policies were hampered by the conservative coalition
elected in the 1938 midterms whose austerity measures pushed the job-
less rate back to 19% by 1939.37 It would take the Second World War
before the USA returned to full employment.
The inability of the USA to take a leadership role to mitigate the eco-
nomic crisis of the Great Depression led to a global depression and the
outbreak of the Second World War. Prior to the First World War, Britain
coordinated the global economy, acting as hegemon. With its empire frag-
menting and the country bankrupt, the UK did not have the political will
or economic ability to foster the international consensus required to pre-
vent another global conflict.38 The only country that had the economic
strength to underwrite the international financial system in the interwar
period was the USA. It did so intermittently in the 1920s and failed com-
pletely to react to the emerging crisis is capitalism in the 1930s. In 1933,
there was an international conference held to find consensus to deal with
the crisis by regulating currency exchanges.39 Rather than taking a leader-
ship role, the American government acted as obstructionists, refusing to
take part in any agreement, rendering the conference futile.40 This was due
to competing interests. America had the capability to act as the hegemon
of the international system, but domestic political and economic interests
coincided to prevent it from being the dominant country. The USA was
far more concerned with its own short-term economic gain ­regardless of
the consequences for the international community. With the prospects for
profitability low and states closing off their economies to foreign trade,
global capital investment ground to a halt, worsening an already dire
situation.
 2 THE GREAT WARS AND THE POST-WAR CONSENSUS 1914–1979 21

The Great Depression of the 1930s was the result of a global reorgan-
ization of capitalism due to the First World War and a major speculative
bubble in America. The USA, now central to the global economy, refused
to coordinate a coherent response to the crisis, leading to a protracted
depression in the global economy. There were several determinants of this
lack of coordination. The first was due to the orthodox political thinking of
the time—the American government tried to keep deficit spending low and
only incrementally increased regulation of the economy. The second deter-
minant was the way the monetary system was organized immediately after
the First World War. Countries were worried about inflation and returned
to the gold standard, thereby heavily constraining liquidity and reining
in government spending. When Wall Street collapsed the gold standard
proved to be a major barrier to government intervention and international
cooperation. The historical legacy of American scepticism towards involve-
ment in Europe led to “beggar-thy-neighbor” policies. By the late 1930s,
Roosevelt began to recognize that America had to play a leadership role in
international military, political and economic affairs. But by this time, the
damage was done. It was far too late to avert the Second World War.

The Post-WWII American New Order

After the Second World War, America was in an unprecedented supe-
rior position vis-a-via the other former belligerents. Moreover, its lead-
ers had the political will, due to international competition, to act as the
hegemon of the capitalist system. The other remaining superpower, the
Soviet Union, had lost millions of people in a war fought over its home
territory. The two objectives would become the priority of the US gov-
ernment in the post-war period: to prevent the spread of communism
in Europe and elsewhere and to open new markets by free trade. As the
hegemon of the capitalist system, the US government worked to man-
age the capitalist system, intervening when the interests of investors and
corporations were threatened. Yet the Americans were also compelled to
prevent the expansion of the Soviet Union. The American government’s
fear of Communism led to the domestic rise of McCarthyism, as the
government tried to eliminate subversive people in the media, academia
and in government. These two features would be the main determinants
of the post-war system: America had to prevent the sphere of influence
of the Soviet Union, while, at the same time, promoting the expansion
of capitalism. Although these two tasks were often complementary, as
Another random document with
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(Be it understood I am alluding to a caravan at rest: when in motion you may
shout your secrets, for the noise of crockery leaping and breaking in what we
learned—with difficulty—to allude to as the pantry will effectually drown
them.)
The two ladies took no heed of my question, but coming up after us—
they never could have got in had they been less spare—filled the van to
overflowing while they explained the various arrangements by which our
miseries on the road were to be mitigated. It was chiefly the gaunt sister who
talked, she being very nimble of tongue, but I must say that on this occasion
Frau von Eckthum did not confine herself to the attitude I so much admired
in her, the ideal feminine one of smiling and keeping quiet. I, meanwhile,
tried to make myself as small as possible, which is what persons in caravans
try to do all the time. I sat on a shiny yellow wooden box that ran down one
side of our “room” with holes in its lid and a flap at the end by means of
which it could, if needed, be lengthened and turned into a bed for a third
sufferer. (On reading this aloud I shall probably substitute traveller for
sufferer, and some milder word such as discomfort for the word miseries in
the first sentence of the paragraph.) Inside the box was a mattress, also extra
sheets, towels, etc., so that, the gaunt sister said there was nothing to prevent
our having house-parties for week-ends. As I do not like such remarks even
in jest I took care to show by my expression that I did not, but Edelgard, to
my surprise, who used always to be the first to scent the vicinity of thin ice,
laughed heartily as she continued her frantically pleased examination of the
van’s contents.
It is not to be expected of any man that he shall sit in a cramped position
on a yellow box at an hour long past his dinner time and take an interest in
puerilities. To Edelgard it seemed to be a kind of a doll’s house, and she,
entirely forgetting the fact of which I so often reminded her that she will be
thirty next birthday, behaved in much the same way as a child who has just
been presented with this expensive form of toy by some foolish and
spendthrift relation. Frau von Eckthum, too, appeared to me to be less
intelligent than I was accustomed to suppose her. She smiled at Edelgard’s
delight as though it pleased her, chatting in a way I hardly recognized as she
drew my wife’s attention to the objects she had not had time to notice.
Edelgard’s animation amazed me. She questioned and investigated and
admired without once noticing that as I sat on the lid of the wooden box I
was obviously filled with sober thoughts. Why, she was so much infatuated
that she actually demanded at intervals that I too should join in this
exhibition of childishness; and it was not until I said very pointedly that I, at
least, was not a little girl, that she was recalled to a proper sense of her
behaviour.
“Poor Otto is hungry,” she said, pausing suddenly in her wild career
round the caravan and glancing at my face.
“Is he? Then he must be fed,” said the gaunt sister, as carelessly and with
as little real interest as if there were no particular hurry. “Look—aren’t these
too sweet?—each on its own little hook—six of them, and their saucers in a
row underneath.”
And so it would have gone on indefinitely if an extremely pretty, nice,
kind little lady had not put her head in at the door and asked with a smile
that fell like oil on the troubled water of my brain whether we were not
dying for something to eat.
Never did the British absence of ceremony and introductions and
preliminary phrases seem to me excellent before. I sprang up, and
immediately knocked my elbow so hard against a brass bracket holding a
candle and hanging on a hook in the wall that I was unable altogether to
suppress an exclamation of pain. Remembering, however, what is due to
society I very skilfully converted it into a rather precipitate and agonized
answer to the little lady’s question, and she, with a charming hospitality,
pressing me to come into her adjoining garden and have some food, I
accepted with alacrity, only regretting that I was unable, from the
circumstance of her going first, to help her down the ladder. (As a matter of
fact she had in the end to help me, because the door slammed behind me and
again imprisoned the skirts of my mackintosh.)
Edelgard, absorbed in delighted contemplation of a corner beneath the so-
called pantry full of brooms and dusters also hanging in rows on hooks, only
shook her head when I inquired if she would not come too; so leaving her to
her ecstasies I went off with my new protector, who asked me why I wore a
mackintosh when there was not a cloud in the sky. I avoided giving a direct
answer by retorting playfully (though wholly politely), “Why not?”—and
indeed my reasons, connected with creases and other ruin attendant on
confinement in a hold-all, were of too domestic and private a nature to be
explained to a stranger so charming. But my counter-question luckily
amused her, and she laughed as she opened a small gate in the wall and led
me into her garden.
 Here I was entertained with the greatest hospitality by herself and her
husband. The fleet of caravans which yearly pervades that part of England is
stationed when not in action on their premises. Hence departs the joyful
caravaner, accompanied by kind wishes; hither he returns sobered, and is
received with balm and bandages—at least, I am sure he would find them
and every other kind form of solace in the little garden on the hill. I spent a
very pleasant and reviving half-hour in a sheltered corner of it, enjoying my
al fresco meal and acquiring much information. To my question as to
whether my entertainers were to be of our party they replied, to my
disappointment, that they were not. Their functions were restricted to this
seeing that we started happy, and being prompt and helpful when we came
back. From them I learned that our party was to consist, besides ourselves
and Frau von Eckthum and that sister whom I have hitherto distinguished by
the adjective gaunt, putting off the necessity as long as possible of alluding
to her by name, she having, as my hearers perhaps remember, married a
person with the unpronounceable one if you see it written and the
unspellable one if you hear it said of Menzies-Legh—the party was to
consist, I say, besides these four, of Menzies-Legh’s niece and one of her
friends; of Menzies-Legh himself; and of two young men about whom no
precise information was obtainable.
“But how? But where?” said I, remembering the limited accommodations
of the three caravans.
My host reassured me by explaining that the two young men would
inhabit a tent by night which, by day, would be carried in one of the
caravans.
“In which one?” I asked anxiously.
“You must settle that among yourselves,” said he smiling.
“That’s what one does all day long caravaning,” said my hostess, handing
me a cup of coffee.
“What does one do?” I asked, eager for information.
“Settle things among oneselves,” said she. “Only generally one doesn’t.”
I put it down to my want of practice in the more idiomatic involutions of
the language that I did not quite follow her meaning; but as one of my
principles is never to let people know that I have not understood them I
merely bowed slightly and, taking out my note-book, remarked that if that
were so I would permit myself to make a list of our party in order to keep its
various members more distinct in my mind.
The following is the way in which we were to be divided:
1. A caravan (the Elsa), containing the Baron and Baroness von Ottringel,
of Storchwerder in Prussia.
2. Another caravan (the Ailsa), containing Mr. and Mrs. Menzies-Legh,
of various addresses, they being ridiculously and superfluously rich.
3. Another caravan (the Ilsa), containing Frau von Eckthum, the Menzies-
Legh niece, and her (as I gathered, school) friend. In this caravan the yellow
box was to be used.
4. One tent, containing two young men, name and status unknown.
The ill-dressed person, old James, was coming too, but would sleep each
night with the horses, they being under his special care; and all of the party
(except ourselves and Frau von Eckthum and her sister who had already, as I
need not say, done so) were yet to assemble. They were expected every
moment, and had been expected all day. If they did not come soon our first
day’s march, opined my host, would not see us camping further away than
the end of the road, for it was already past four o’clock. This reminded me
that my luggage ought to be unpacked and stowed away, and I accordingly
begged to be excused that I might go and superintend the operation, for I
have long ago observed that when the controlling eye of the chief is
somewhere else things are very apt to go irremediably wrong.
“Against stupidity,” says some great German—it must have been Goethe,
and if it was not, then no doubt it was Schiller, they having, I imagine,
between them said everything there is to be said—“against stupidity the very
gods struggle in vain.” And I beg that this may not be taken as a reflection
on my dear wife, but rather as an inference of general applicability. In any
case the recollection of it sent me off with a swinging stride to the caravans.
 CHAPTER IV

D ARKNESS had, if not actually gathered, certainly approached within

measurable distance, substantially aided by lowering storm-clouds, by
the time we were ready to start. Not that we were, as a fact, ever ready
to start, because the two young girls of the party, with truly British
inconsideration for others, had chosen to do that which Menzies-Legh in
fantastic idiom described as not turning up. I heard him say it several times
before I was able, by carefully comparing it with the context, to discover his
meaning. The moment I discovered it I of course saw its truth: turned up
they certainly had not, and though too well-bred to say it aloud I privately
applauded him every time he remarked, with an accumulating emphasis,
“Bother those girls.”
For the first two hours nobody had time to bother them, and to get some
notion of the busy scene the yard presented my hearers must imagine a
bivouac during our manoeuvres in which the soldiers shall all be recruits just
joined and where there shall be no superior to direct them. I know to imagine
this requires imagination, but only he who does it will be able to form an
approximately correct notion of what the yard looked like and sounded like
while the whole party (except the two girls who were not there) did their
unpacking.
It will be obvious on a moment’s reflection that portmanteaus, etc., had to
be opened on the bare earth in the midst, so to speak, of untamed nature,
with threatening clouds driving over them, and rude winds seizing what they
could of their contents and wantoning with them about the yard. It will be
equally obvious that these contents had to be handed up one by one by the
person below to the person in the caravan who was putting them away and
the person below having less to do would be quicker in his movements,
while the person above having more to do would be—I suppose naturally but
I think with a little self-control it ought not to be so—quicker in her temper;
and so she was, and quite unjustifiably, because though she might have the
double work of sorting and putting away I, on the other hand, had to stoop so
continuously that I was very shortly in a condition of actual physical
distress. The young men, who might have helped and at first did help Frau
von Eckthum (though I consider they were on more than delicate ground
while they did it) were prevented being of use because one had brought a
bull terrier, a most dangerous looking beast, and the other—probably out of
compliment to us—a white Pomeranian; and the bull terrier, without the
least warning or preliminary growl such as our decent German dogs emit
before proceeding to action, suddenly fixed his teeth into the Pomeranian
and left them there. The howls of the Pomeranian may be imagined. The bull
terrier, on the other hand, said nothing at all. At once the hubbub in the yard
was increased tenfold. No efforts of its master could make the bull terrier let
go. Menzies-Legh called for pepper, and the women-folk ransacked the
larders in the rear of the vans, but though there were cruets there was no
pepper. At length the little lady of the garden, whose special gift it seemed to
appear at the right moment, judging no doubt that the sounds in the yard
could not altogether be explained by caravaners unpacking, came out with a
pot full, and throwing it into the bull terrier’s face he was obliged to let go in
order to sneeze.
During the rest of the afternoon the young men could help no one because
they were engaged in the care of their dogs, the owner of the Pomeranian
attending to its wounds and the owner of the bull terrier preventing a
repetition of its conduct. And Menzies-Legh came up to me and said in his
singularly trailing melancholy voice, did I not think they were jolly dogs and
going to be a great comfort to us.
“Oh, quite,” said I, unable exactly to understand what he meant.
Still less was I able to understand the attitude of the dogs’ masters toward
each other. Not thus would our fiery German youth have behaved.
Undoubtedly in a similar situation they would have come to blows, or in any
case to the class of words that can only be honourably wiped out in the blood
of a duel. But these lymphatic Englishmen, both of them straggly, pale
persons in clothes so shabby and so much too big that I was at a loss to
conceive how they could appear in them before ladies, hung on each to his
dog in perfect silence, and when it was over and the aggressor’s owner, said
he was sorry, the Pomeranian’s owner, instead of confronting him with the
fury of a man who has been wronged and owes it to his virility not to endure
it, actually tried to pretend that somehow, by some means, it was all his
dog’s fault or his own in allowing him to be near the other, and therefore it
was he who, in their jargon, was “frightfully sorry.” Such is the softness of
this much too rich and far too comfortable nation. Merely to see it made me
blush to be a man; but I became calm again on recollecting that the variety
of man I happened to be was, under God, a German. And I discovered later
that neither of them ever touch an honest mug of beer, but drink instead—
will it be believed?—water.
Now it must not be supposed that at this point of my holiday I had
already ceased to enjoy it. On the contrary, I was enjoying myself in my
quiet way very much. Not only does the study of character greatly interest
me, but I am blest with a sense of humour united to that toughness of
disposition which stops a man from saying, however much he may want to,
die. Therefore I bore the unpacking and the arranging and the advice I got
from everybody and the questions I was asked by everybody and the calls
here and the calls there and the wind that did not cease a moment and the
rain that pelted down at intervals, without a murmur. I had paid for my
holiday, and I meant to enjoy it. But it did seem to me a strange way of
taking pleasure for wealthy people like the Menzies-Leghs, who could have
gone to the best hotel in the gayest resort, and who instead were bent into
their portmanteaus as double as I was, doing work that their footmen would
have scorned; and when during an extra sharp squall we had hastily shut our
portmanteaus and all scrambled into our respective—I was going to say
kennels, but I will be just and say caravans, I expressed this surprise to
Edelgard, she said Mrs. Menzies-Legh had told her while I was at luncheon
that both she and her sister desired for a time to remove themselves as far as
possible from what she called the ministrations of menials. They wished,
said Edelgard, quoting Mrs. Menzies-Legh’s words, to endeavour to fulfil
the Scriptures and work with their hands the things which are good; and
Edelgard, who was much amused by the reference to the Scriptures, agreed
with me, who was also greatly diverted, that it is a game, this working with
one’s hands, that only seems desirable to those so much surfeited with all
that is worth having that they cease to be able to distinguish its value, and
that it would be interesting to watch how long the two pampered ladies
enjoyed playing it. Edelgard of course had no fears for herself, for she is a
most admirably trained hausfrau, and the keeping of our tiny wheeled house
in order would be easy enough after the keeping in order of our flat at home
and the constant supervision, amounting on washing days to goading, of
Clothilde. But the two sisters had not had the advantage of a husband who
kept them to their work from the beginning, and Mrs. Menzies-Legh was a
ne’er-do-well, spoiled, and encouraged to do nothing whatever except, so far
as I could see, practise how best to pretend she was clever.
 By six we were ready to start. From six to seven we bothered the girls. At
seven serious consultations commenced as to what had better be done. Start
we must, for kind though our host and hostess were I do not think they
wanted us to camp in their front yard; if they did they did not say so, and it
became every moment more apparent that a stormy night was drawing
nearer across the hills. Menzies-Legh, with growing uneasiness, asked his
wife I suppose a dozen times what on earth, as he put it, had become of the
girls; whether she thought he had better go and look for them; whether she
thought they had had an accident; whether she thought they had lost the
address or themselves; to all of which she answered that she thought nothing
except that they were naughty girls who would be suitably scolded when
they did come.
The little lady of the garden came on the scene at this juncture with her
usual happy tact, and suggested that it being late and we being new at it and
therefore no doubt going to take longer arranging our camp this first night
than we afterward would, we should start along the road to a bit of common
about half a mile further on and there, with no attempt at anything like a
march, settle for the night. We would then, she pointed out, either meet the
girls or, if they came another way, she would send them round to us.
Such sensible suggestions could only, as the English say, be jumped at. In
a moment all was bustle. We had been sitting disconsolately each on his
ladder arguing (not without touches of what threatened to become
recrimination), and we now briskly put them away and prepared to be off.
With some difficulty the horses, who did not wish to go, were put in, the
dogs were chained behind separate vans, the ladders slung underneath (this
was no easy job, but one of the straggly young men came to our assistance
just as Edelgard was about to get under our caravan and find out how to do
it, and showed such unexpected skill that I put him down as being probably
in the bolt and screw trade), adieux and appropriate speeches were made to
our kind entertainer, and off we went.
First marched old James, leading the Ilsa’s horse, with Menzies-Legh
beside him, and Mrs. Menzies-Legh, her head wrapped up very curiously in
yards and yards of some transparent fluttering stuff of a most unpractically
feminine nature and her hand grasping a walking stick of a most
aggressively masculine one, marched behind, giving me who followed (to
my surprise I found it was expected of me that far from sitting as I had
intended to do inside our caravan I should trudge along leading our horse)
much unneeded and unasked-for advice. Her absurd head arrangement,
which I afterward learned was called a motor veil, prevented my seeing
anything except egregiously long eyelashes and the tip of an inquiring and
strange to say not over aristocratic nose—Edelgard’s, true to its many
ancestors, is purest hook. Taller and gaunter than ever in her straight up and
down sort of costume, she stalked beside me her head on a level with mine
(and I am by no means a short man), telling me what I ought to do and what
I ought not to do in the matter of leading a horse; and when she had done
that ad nauseam, ad libitum, and ad infinitum (I believe I have forgotten
nothing at all of my classics) she turned to my peaceful wife sitting on the
Elsa’s platform and announced that if she stayed up there she would
probably soon be sorry.

In another moment Edelgard was sorry, for unfortunately my horse had

had either too many oats or not enough exercise, and the instant the first van
had lumbered through the gate and out of sight round the corner to the left he
made a sudden and terrifying attempt to follow it at a gallop.
Those who know caravans know that they must never gallop: not, that is,
if the contents are to remain unbroken and the occupants unbruised. They
also know that no gate is more than exactly wide enough to admit of their
passing through it, and that unless the passing through is calculated and
carried out to a nicety the caravan that emerges will not be the caravan that
went in. Providence that first evening was on my side, for I never got
through any subsequent gate with an equal neatness. My heart had barely
time to leap into my mouth before we were through and out in the road, and
Mrs. Menzies-Legh, catching hold of the bridle, was able to prevent the
beast’s doing what was clearly in his eye, turn round to the left after his mate
with a sharpness that would have snapped the Elsa in two.
Edelgard, rather pale, scrambled down. The sight of our caravan heaving
over inequalities or lurching as it was turned round was a sight I never
learned to look at without a tightened feeling about the throat. Anxiously I
asked Mrs. Menzies-Legh, when the horse, having reached the rear of the
Ilsa, had settled down again, what would happen if I did not get through the
next gate with an equal skill.
“Everything may happen,” said she, “from the scraping off of the varnish
to the scraping off of a wheel.
 “But this is terrible,” I cried. “What would we do with one wheel too
few?”
“We couldn’t do anything till there was a new one.”
“And who would pay——”
I stopped. Aspects of the tour were revealed to me which had not till then
been illuminated. “It depends,” said she, answering my unfinished question,
“whose wheel it was.”
“And suppose my dear wife,” I inquired after a pause during which many
thoughts surged within me, “should have the misfortune to break, say, a
cup?”
“A new cup would have to be provided.”
“And would I—but suppose cups are broken by circumstances over
which I have no control?”
She snatched quickly at the bridle. “Is that the horse?” she asked.
“Is what the horse?”
“The circumstances. If I hadn’t caught him then he’d have had your
caravan in the ditch.”
“My dear lady,” I cried, nettled, “he would have done nothing of the sort.
I was paying attention. As an officer you must admit that my ignorance of
horses cannot be really as extensive as you are pleased to pretend you think.”
“Dear Baron, when does a woman ever admit?”
A shout from behind drowned the answer that would, I was sure, have
silenced her, for I had not then discovered that no answer ever did. It was
from one of the pale young men, who was making signs to us from the rear.
“Run back and see what he wants,” commanded Mrs. Menzies-Legh,
marching on at my horse’s head with Edelgard, slightly out of breath, beside
her.
I found that our larder had come undone and was shedding our ox-tongue,
which we had hoped to keep private, on to the road in front of the eyes of
Frau von Eckthum and the two young men. This was owing to Edelgard’s
carelessness, and I was extremely displeased with her. At the back of each
van were two lockers, one containing an oil stove and saucepans and the
other, provided with air-holes, was the larder in which our provisions were to
be kept. Both had doors consisting of flaps that opened outward and
downward and were fastened by a padlock. With gross carelessness
Edelgard, after putting in the tongue, had merely shut the larder door without
padlocking it, and when a sufficient number of jolts had occurred the flap
fell open and the tongue fell out. It was being followed by some private
biscuits we had brought.
Naturally I was upset. Every time Edelgard is neglectful or forgetful she
recedes about a year in my esteem. It takes her a year of attentiveness and
diligence to regain that point in my affection on which she previously stood.
She knew this, and used to be careful to try to keep proper pace, if I may so
express it, with my love, and at the date at which I have arrived in the
narrative had not yet given up trying, so that when by shouting I had made
Mrs. Menzies-Legh understand that the Elsa was to be stopped Edelgard
hurried back to inquire what was wrong, and was properly distressed when
she saw the result of her negligence. Well, repentance may be a good thing,
but our ox-tongue was gone forever; before he could be stopped the Ailsa’s
horse, following close behind, had placed his huge hoof on it and it became
pulp.
“How sad,” said Frau von Eckthum gazing upon this ruin. “But so nice of
you, dear Baroness, to think of it. It might just have saved us all from
starvation.”
“Well, it can’t now,” said one of the young men; and he took it on the
point of his stick and cast it into the ditch.
Edelgard began silently to pick up the scattered biscuits. Immediately
both the young men darted forward to do it for her with a sudden awakening
to energy that seemed very odd in persons who slouched along with their
hands in their pockets. It made me wonder whether perhaps they thought her
younger than she was. As we resumed our march, I came to the conclusion
that this must be so, for such activity of assistance would otherwise be
unnatural, and I resolved to take the earliest opportunity of bringing the
conversation round to birthdays and then carelessly mentioning that my
wife’s next one would be her thirtieth. In this department of all others I am
not the man to allow buds to go unnipped.
We had not been travelling ten minutes before we came to a stony turning
up to the right which old James, who was a native of those parts, said was
the entrance to the common. It seemed strange to camp almost within a
stone’s throw of our starting-place, but the rain was at that moment pelting
down on our defenceless heads, and people hurrying to their snug homes
stopped in spite of it to look at us with a wondering pity, so that we all
wished to get off the road as soon as possible and into the privacy of furze
bushes. The lane was in no sense a hill: it was a gentle incline, almost
immediately reaching flat ground; but it was soft and stony, and the Ilsa’s
horse, after dragging his caravan for a few yards up it, could get no farther,
and when Menzies-Legh put the roller behind the back wheel to prevent the
Ilsa’s returning thither from whence it had just come the chain of the roller
snapped, the roller, released, rolled away, and the Ilsa began to move
backward on top of the Elsa, which in its turn began to move backward on
top of the Ailsa, which in its turn began to move backward across the road in
the direction of the ditch.
It was an unnerving spectacle; for it must be borne in mind that however
small the caravans seemed when you were inside them when you were
outside they looked like mighty monsters, towering above hedges, filling up
all but wide roads, and striking awe into the hearts even of motorists, who
got out of their way with the eager politeness otherwise rude persons display
when confronted by yet greater powers of being disagreeable.
Menzies-Legh and the two young men, acting on some shouted directions
from old James, rushed at the stones lying about and selecting the biggest
placed them, I must say with commendable promptness, behind the Ilsa’s
wheels, and what promised to be an appalling catastrophe was averted. I,
who was reassuring Edelgard, was not able to help. She had asked me with
ill-concealed anxiety whether I thought the caravans would begin to go
backward in the night when we were inside them, and I was doing my best to
calm her, only of course I had to point out that it was extremely windy; and
quite a dirty and undesirable workman trudging by at that moment with his
bag of tools on his back and his face set homeward, she stared after him and
said: “Otto, how nice to be going to a house.”
“Come, come,” said I rallying her—but undoubtedly the weather was
depressing.
We had to trace up the lane to the common. This was the first time that
ominous verb fell upon my ear; how often it was destined to do so will be
readily imagined by those of my countrymen who have ever visited the
English county of Sussex supposing, which I doubt, that such there are. Its
meaning is that you are delayed for any length of time from an hour upward
at the bottom of each hill while the united horses drag one caravan after
another to the top. On this first occasion the tracing chains we had brought
with us behaved in the same way the roller chain had and immediately
snapped, and Menzies-Legh, moved to anger, inquired severely of old James
how it was that everything we touched broke; but he, being innocent, was
not very voluble, and Menzies-Legh soon left him alone. Happily we had
another pair of chains with us. All this, however, meant great delays, and the
rain had almost left off, and the sun was setting in a gloomy bank of leaden
clouds across a comfortless distance and sending forth its last pale beams
through thinning raindrops, by the time the first caravan safely reached the
common.
If any of you should by any chance, however remote, visit Panthers, pray
go to Grib’s (or Grip’s—in spite of repeated inquiries I at no time discovered
which it was) Common, and picture to yourselves our first night in that bleak

It was an unnerving spectacle

refuge. For it was a refuge—the alternative being to march along blindly till
the next morning, which was, of course, equivalent to not being an
alternative at all—but how bleak a one! Gray shadows were descending on
it, cold winds were whirling round it, the grass was, naturally, dripping, and
scattered in and out among the furze bushes were the empty sardine and
other tins of happier sojourners. These last objects were explained by the
presence of a hop-field skirting one side of the common, a hop-field luckily
not yet in that state which attracts hop-pickers, or the common would hardly
have been a place to which gentlemen care to take their wives. On the
opposite side to the hop-field the ground fell away, and the tips of two hop-
kilns peered at us over the edge. In front of us, concealed by the furze and
other bushes of a prickly, clinging nature, lay the road, along which people
going home to houses, as Edelgard put it, were constantly hurrying. All
round, except on the hop-field side, we could see much farther than we
wanted to across a cheerless stretch of country. The three caravans were
drawn up in a row facing the watery sunset, because the wind chiefly came
from the east (though it also came from all round) and the backs of the vans
offered more resistance to its fury than any other side of them, there being
only one small wooden window in that portion of them which, being kept
carefully shut by us during the whole tour, would have been infinitely better
away.
I hope my hearers see the caravans: if not it seems to me I read in vain.
Square—or almost square—brown boxes on wheels, the door in front, with a
big aperture at the side of it shut at night by a wooden shutter and affording a
pleasant prospect (when there was one) by day, a much too good-sized
window on each side, the bald back with no relief of any sort unless the
larders can be regarded as such, for the little shutter window I have
mentioned became invisible when shut, and inside an impression (I never
use a word other than deliberately), an impression, then, I say, of snugness,
produced by the green carpet, the green arras lining to the walls, the green
eider-down quilts on the beds, the green portière dividing the main room
from the small portion in front which we used as a dressing room, the
flowered curtains, the row of gaily bound books on a shelf, and the polish of
the brass candle brackets that seemed to hit me every time I moved. What
became of this impression in the case of one reasonable man, too steady to
be blown hither and thither by passing gusts of enthusiasm, perhaps the
narrative will disclose.
Meanwhile the confusion on the common was indescribable. I can even
now on calling it to mind only lift up hands of amazement. To get the three
horses out was in itself no easy task for persons unaccustomed to such work,
but to get the three tables out and try to unfold them and make them stand
straight on the uneven turf was much worse. All things in a caravan have
hinges and flaps, the idea being that they shall take up little room; but if they
take up little room they take up a great deal of time, and that first night when
there was not much of it these patent arrangements which made each chair
and table a separate problem added considerably to the prevailing chaos.
Having at length set them out on wet grass, table-cloths had to be extracted
from the depths of the yellow boxes in each caravan and spread upon them,
and immediately they blew away on to the furze bushes. Recaptured and
respread they immediately did it again. Mrs. Menzies-Legh, when I ventured
to say that I would not go and fetch them next time they did it, told me to
weigh them down with the knives and forks, but nobody knew where they
were, and their discovery having defied our united intelligences for an
immense amount of precious time was at last the result of the merest chance,
for who could have dreamed they were concealed among the bedding? As
for Edelgard, I completely lost control over her. She seemed to slip through
my fingers like water. She was everywhere, and yet nowhere. I do not know
what she did, but I know that she left me quite unaided, and I found myself
performing the most menial tasks, utterly unfit for an officer, such as
fetching cups and saucers and arranging spoons in rows. Nor, if I had not
witnessed it, would I ever have believed that the preparation of eggs and
coffee was so difficult. What could be more frugal than such a supper? Yet it
took the united efforts for nearly two hours of seven highly civilized and
intelligent beings to produce it. Edelgard said that that was why it did, but I
at once told her that to reason that the crude and the few are more capable
than the clever and the many was childish.
When, with immense labour and infinite conversation, this meagre fare
was at last placed upon the tables it was so late that we had to light our
lanterns in order to be able to see it; and my hearers who have never been
outside the sheltered homes of Storchwerder and know nothing about what
can happen to them when they do will have difficulty in picturing us
gathered round the tables in that gusty place, vainly endeavouring to hold
our wraps about us, our feet in wet grass and our heads in a stormy darkness.
The fitful flicker of the lanterns played over rapidly cooling eggs and grave
faces. It was indeed a bad beginning, enough to discourage the stoutest
holiday-maker. This was not a holiday: this was privation combined with
exposure. Frau von Eckthum was wholly silent. Even Mrs. Menzies-Legh,
although she tried to laugh, produced nothing but hollow sounds. Edelgard
only spoke once, and that was to say that the coffee was very bad and might
she make it unaided another time, a remark and a question received with a
gloomy assent. Menzies-Legh was by this time extremely anxious about the
girls, and though his wife still said they were naughty and would be scolded
it was with an ever-fainter conviction. The two young men sat with their
shoulders hunched up to their ears in total silence. No one, however, was
half so much deserving of sympathy as myself and Edelgard, who had been
travelling since the previous morning and more than anybody needed good
food and complete rest. But there were hardly enough scrambled eggs to go
round, most of them having been broken in the jolting up the lane on to the
common, and after the meal, instead of smoking a cigar in the comparative
quiet and actual dryness of one’s caravan, I found that everybody had to turn
to and—will it be believed?—wash up.
“No servants, you know—so free, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Menzies-Legh,
pressing a cloth into one of my hands and a fork into the other, and
indicating a saucepan of hot water with a meaning motion of her forefinger.
Well, I had to. My hearers must not judge me harshly. I am aware that it
was conduct unbecoming in an officer, but the circumstances were unusual.
Menzies-Legh and the young men were doing it too, and I was taken by
surprise. Edelgard, when she saw me thus employed, first started in
astonishment and then said she would do it for me.
“No, no, let him do it,” quickly interposed Mrs. Menzies-Legh, almost as
though she liked me to wash up in the same saucepan as herself.
But I will not dwell on the forks. We were still engaged in the amazingly
difficult and distasteful work of cleaning them when the rain suddenly
descended with renewed fury. This was too much. I slipped away from Mrs.
Menzies-Legh’s side into the darkness, whispered to Edelgard to follow, and
having found my caravan bade her climb in after me and bolt the door. What
became of the remaining forks I do not know—there are limits to that which
a man will do in order to have a clean one. Stealthily we undressed in the
dark so that our lighted windows might not betray us—“Let them each,” I
said to myself with grim humour, “suppose that we are engaged helping one
of the others”—and then, Edelgard having ascended into the upper berth and
I having crawled into the lower, we lay listening to the loud patter of the rain
on the roof so near our faces (especially Edelgard’s), and marvelled that it
should make a noise that could drown not only every sound outside but also
our voices when we, by shouting, endeavoured to speak.
 CHAPTER V

U NDER the impression that I had not closed my eyes all night I was
surprised to find when I opened them in the morning that I had. I must
have slept, and with some soundness; for there stood Edelgard, holding
back the curtain that concealed me when in bed from the gaze of any curious
should the caravan door happen to burst open, already fully dressed and
urging me to get up. It is true that I had been dreaming I was still between
Flushing and Queenboro’, so that in my sleep I was no doubt aware of the
heavings of the caravan while she dressed; for a caravan gives, so to speak,
to every movement of the body, and I can only hope that if any of you ever
go in one the other person in the bed above you may be a motionless sleeper.
Indeed, I discovered that after all it was not an advantage to occupy the
lower bed. While the rain was striking the roof with the deafening noise of
unlimited and large stones I heard nothing of Edelgard, though I felt every
time she moved. When, however, it left off, the creakings and crunchings of
her bed and bedding (removed only a few inches from my face) every time
she turned round were so alarming that disagreeable visions crossed my
mind of the bed, unable longer to sustain a weight greater perhaps than what
it was meant to carry, descending in toto in one of these paroxysms upon the
helpless form (my own) stretched beneath. Clearly if it did I should be very
much hurt, and would quite likely suffocate before assistance could be
procured. These visions, however, in spite of my strong impression of
unclosed eyes, must ultimately and mercifully have been drowned in sleep,
and my bed being very comfortable and I at the end of my forces after the
previous day when I did sleep I did it soundly and I also apparently did it
long; for the sun was coming through the open window accompanied by
appetizing smells of hot coffee when Edelgard roused me by the information
that breakfast was ready, and that as everybody seemed hungry if I did not
come soon I might as well not come at all.
She had put my clothes out, but had brought me no hot water because she
said the two sisters had told her it was too precious, what there was being
wanted for washing up. I inquired with some displeasure whether I, then,
were less important than forks, and to my surprise Edelgard replied that it
depended on whether they were silver; which was, of course, perilously near
repartee. She immediately on delivering this left the caravan, and as I could
not go to the door to call her back—as she no doubt recollected—I was left
to my cold water and to my surprise. For though I had often noticed a certain
talent she has in this direction (my hearers will remember instances) it had
not yet been brought to bear personally on me. Repartee is not amiss in the
right place, but the right place is never one’s husband. Indeed, on the whole I
think it is a dangerous addition to a woman, and best left alone. For is not
that which we admire in woman womanliness? And womanliness, as the
very sound of the word suggests, means nothing that is not round, and soft,
and pliable; the word as one turns it on one’s tongue has a smoothly liquid
sound as of sweet oil, or precious ointment, or balm, that very well expresses
our ideal. Sharp tongues, sharp wits—what are these but drawbacks and
blots on the picture?
Such (roughly) were my thoughts while I washed in very little and very
cold water, and putting on my clothes was glad to see that Edelgard had at
least brushed them. I had to pin the curtains carefully across the windows
because breakfast was going on just outside, and hurried heads kept passing
to and fro in search, no doubt, of important parts of the meal that had either
been forgotten or were nowhere to be found.
I confess I thought they might have waited with breakfast till I came. It is
possible that Frau von Eckthum was thinking so too; but as far as the others
were concerned I was dealing, I remembered, with members of the most
inconsiderate nation in Europe. And besides, I reflected, it was useless to
look for the courtesy we in Germany delight to pay to rank and standing
among people who had neither of these things themselves. For what was
Menzies-Legh? A man with much money (which is vulgar) and no title at
all. Neither in the army, nor in the navy, nor in the diplomatic service, not
even the younger son of a titled family, which in England, as perhaps my
hearers have heard with surprise, is a circumstance sometimes sufficient to
tear the title a man would have had in any other country from him and send
him forth a naked Mr. into the world—Menzies-Legh, I suppose, after the
fashion of our friend the fabled fox in a similar situation, saw no dignity in,
nor any reason why he should be polite to, noble foreign grapes. And his
wife’s original good German blood had become so thoroughly undermined
by the action of British microbes that I could no longer regard her as a
daughter of one of our oldest families; while as for the two young men, on
asking Menzies-Legh the previous evening over that damp and dreary supper
of insufficient eggs who they were, being forced to do so by his not having
as a German gentleman would have done given me every information at the
earliest opportunity of his own accord, with details as to income,
connections, etc., so that I would know the exact shade of cordiality my
behaviour toward them was to be tinged with—on asking Menzies-Legh, I
repeat, he merely told me that the one with the spectacles and the hollow
cheeks and the bull terrier was Browne, who was going into the Church, and
the other with the Pomeranian and the round, hairless face was Jellaby.
Concerning Jellaby he said no more. Who and what he was except pure
Jellaby I would have been left to find out by degrees as best I could if I had
not pressed him further, and inquired whether Jellaby also were going into
the Church, and if not what was he going into?
Menzies-Legh replied—not with the lively and detailed interest a German
gentleman would have displayed talking about the personal affairs of a
friend, but with an appearance of being bored that very extraordinarily came
over him whenever I endeavoured to talk to him on topics of real interest,
and disappeared whenever he was either doing dull things such as marching,
or cleaning his caravan, or discussing tiresome trivialities with the others
such as some foolish poem lately appeared, or the best kind of kitchen
ranges to put into the cottages he was building for old women on his estates
—that Jellaby was not going into anything, being in already; and that what
he was in was the House of Commons, where he was not only a member of
the Labour Party but also a Socialist.
I need not say that I was considerably upset. Here I was going to live, as
the English say, cheek by jowl for a substantial period with a Socialist
member of Parliament, and it was even then plain to me that the caravan
mode of life encourages, if I may so express it, a degree of cheek by
jowlishness unsurpassed, nay, unattained, by any other with which I am
acquainted. To descend to allegory, and taking a Prussian officer of noble
family as the cheek, how terrible to him of all persons on God’s earth must
be a radical jowl. Since I am an officer and a gentleman it goes without
saying that I am also a Conservative. You cannot be one without the others,
at least not comfortably, in Germany. Like the three Graces, these other three
go also hand in hand. The King of Prussia is, I am certain, in his heart
passionately Conservative. So also I have every reason to believe is God
Almighty. And from the Conservative point of view (which is the only right
one) all Liberals are bad—bad, unworthy, and unfit; persons with whom one
would never dream of either dining or talking; persons dwelling in so low a
mental and moral depth that to dwell in one still lower seems almost
extravagantly impossible. Yet in that lower depth, moving about like those
blind monsters science tells us inhabit the everlasting darkness of the bottom
of the seas, beyond the reach of light, of air, and of every Christian decency,
dwells the Socialist. And who can be a more impartial critic than myself?
Excluded by my profession from any opinion or share in politics I am able to
look on with the undisturbed impartiality of the disinterested, and I see these
persons as a danger to my country, a danger to my King, and a danger (if I
had any) to my posterity. In consequence I was very cold to Jellaby when he
asked me to pass him something at supper—I think it was the salt. It is true
he is prevented by his nationality from riddling our Reichstag with his
poisonous theories (not a day would I have endured his company if he had
been a German) but the broad principle remained, and as I dressed I reflected
with much ruefulness that even as it was his presence was almost
compromising, and I could not but blame Frau von Eckthum for not having
informed me of its imminence beforehand.
And the other—the future pastor, Browne. A pastor is necessary and even
very well at a christening, a marriage, or an interment; but for mingling
purposes on common social ground—no. Sometimes at public dinners in
Storchwerder there has been one in the background, but he very properly
remained in it; and once or twice dining with our country neighbours their
pastor and his wife were present, and the pastor said grace and his wife said
nothing, and they felt they were not of our class, and if they had not felt it of
themselves they would very quickly have been made to feel it by others.
This is all as it should be: perfectly natural and proper; and it was equally
natural and proper that on finding I was required to do what the English call
hobnob with a future pastor I should object. I did object strongly. And
decided, while I dressed, that my attitude toward both Jellaby and Browne
should be of the chilliest coolness.
Now in this narrative nothing is to be hidden, for I desire it to be a real
and sincere human document, and I am the last man, having made a mistake,
to pass it over in silence. My friends shall see me as I am, with all my human
weaknesses and, I hope, some at least of my human strengths. Not that there
is anything to be ashamed of in the matter of him Menzies-Legh spoke
baldly of as Browne—rather should Menzies-Legh have been ashamed of
leading me through his uncommunicativeness into a natural error; for how
could I be supposed to realize that the singular nation places the Church as a