INTRODUCTION
Mr. Brycehas for a long time been a man of international prominence. His wide influence is undoubtedly due to many causes, but it may, in general, be traced to two characteristics: Mr. Bryce is a humanist who sympathetically watches the progress of nations and the guiding of governments; he is also a historian. In his biographical study of John Richard Green he has skillfully analyzed the aptitudes of the historian, and in so doing has pointedly, if unwittingly, described himself. Accuracy, he says,—a desire for the exact truth,—keen observation, sound judgment, imagination, and, following inevitably from these, command of literary exposition, are the powers which a historian needs. Each of these qualities Mr. Bryce himself possesses in large measure. It is his historical power, enabling him to observe and record the significant phases and events of human life, plus his sympathetic interest in itspresent-day manifestations which explain, in some degree, his singularly eminent position as an authority on matters pertaining to human institutions in various countries.
Mr. Bryce was born in northern Ireland in 1838, of Scotch-Irish parents; and he combines in his nature the stalwart intellectual propensities of the Scot and the artistic attributes of the Celt. He was educated at the University of Glasgow, and later went to Oxford where he won many honors. After finishing his collegiate work he was admitted to the bar and practiced law in London until 1882. At the age of thirty-two he was appointed Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford. Up to this point his life had been almost exclusively that of a student and a scholar; and already at this time he was recognized as a man of remarkable historical ability. The year 1880 marked a change in his life. He presented himself to the workingmen of Tower Hamlets, London, as a candidate for a seat in the House of Commons. Mr. Stead tells us that Mr. Bryce, in this first campaign, addressed his open-air audiences somewhat after the manner of a professor lecturingin a classroom; he succeeded, nevertheless, in getting himself elected, and for over twenty-five years thereafter was a member of Parliament. During these years he held various responsible offices having to do with home and foreign administrative work. The practical results of his political influence were advancement in public education, the securing of more extensive parks and open country spaces for the pleasure of the poorer classes, and the furtherance of international peace. In 1907, Mr. Bryce was appointed ambassador to the United States, which office he resigned in 1913 to carry on literary work.
Mr. Bryce’s knowledge is the result not only of university training and experience in public life, but also of varied reading. He has read art, science, history, and has always been an interested student of poetry. In speaking once to Americans of Swinburne, he suddenly paused and asked, “Who are writing your songs and stirring your heart,—or isn’t your heart being stirred? Nothing is more important than that each generation and each land should have its poets. Each oncoming tide oflife, each age, requires and needs men of lofty thought who shall dream and sing for it, who shall gather up its tendencies and formulate its ideals and voice its spirit, proclaiming its duties and awakening its enthusiasm, through the high authority of the poet and the art of his verse.” How extensively Mr. Bryce has read the poets, both ancient and modern, one perceives from the references and allusions in hisStudies in Contemporary Biography.
The most important source of Mr. Bryce’s knowledge, the one which has furnished the material for nearly all his books, has been his first-hand observation and study of many countries. When still a young man he wandered alone over Mount Ararat, since the native guides refused to follow him to the unknown wilds of that lonely peak. He visited the Ottoman Empire in 1876, and, as a result of his investigations there, became an advocate of the Bulgarian cause; in fact it was his speeches on the Eastern Question which first made him prominent politically. Mr. Bryce has traveled also in Iceland; he was in Africa just previous to the Boer War; he has been allover South America; and he knows the United States as few Americans know it. He has studied these countries with great faithfulness, observing keenly every phase of the political and social life. An interesting sample of his method of gathering information is found in the chapter on “The Position of Women” inThe American Commonwealth. When traveling in the West he noticed that all of the women seemed so very well dressed that apparently none could be the wife or daughter of a workingman; but close observation dispelled this illusion. Idling in a bookstore one day in Oregon, he noticed a woman who was asking for a certain magazine. After her departure he asked the salesman who she was, and found that she was the wife of a workman, and the magazine a Paris fashion journal. “This,” says Mr. Bryce, “set me to observing female dress more closely, and it turned out to be perfectly true that the women in these little towns were following the Parisian fashions very closely, and were, in fact, ahead of the majority of English ladies belonging to the professional and mercantile classes.” Thus no detail, howevertrivial, escapes him; the pleasant and unpleasant phases of our American life, our manners, clothes, scenery have all been noted and reckoned with in the statement of tendencies and conclusions.
As a parliamentarian Mr. Bryce is said to have been direct, honest, and always illuminating. His ability to command attention was due not to any great oratorical gift, but rather to his scholarly view of any matter under debate. Mr. Justin McCarthy reports that the members of the House who might be dining, smoking, or reading in the rooms assigned for these purposes, would, when the news was passed around that Mr. Bryce was speaking, leave these pleasant diversions, and betake themselves with great speed to the debating chamber. “I have many a time,” he says, “heard Conservative members murmur, in tones not altogether expressing absolute satisfaction at the disturbing information, ‘Bryce is up—I must go in and hear what he has to say.’ ... Everybody knows that when he speaks it is because he has something to say which ought to be spoken and therefore oughtto be heard.” Mr. Bryce was able to command attention also because of his reputation as a courageous nonpartisan. He never advocated a measure or policy for mere party reasons or for personal aggrandizement. Not infrequently he has fought bravely with the minority of his own party, and has at times suffered bitter attacks, as when he remained resolutely pro-Boer during the rampant jingoism of the South African War. But however widely political enemies might differ from him, they respected his sincerity and his luminous view of governmental problems. It is further characteristic of Mr. Bryce’s public life that he never, in his desire for the welfare of his own country, lost sight of what is due other nations. In practice as well as in precept he upheld the doctrine that “patriotism consists not in waving a flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.”
Mr. Bryce’s books deal, for the most part, with historical subjects and present-day governments.The Holy Roman Empire, written when he was only twenty-four years old, is still regarded by able historians as an accurate andauthoritative work; and, in the judgment of literary critics, it is written with so much charm of style that it is destined to become an English classic. All of the books which have to do with foreign nations are characterized by a tactful, faithful, and above all a truthful, handling. It wasThe American Commonwealthwhich made the citizens of the United States regard Mr. Bryce as a friend of the Republic; but he is not so regarded because he has always stroked the gleaming pinions of the American eagle. Although he does seem to share the hope universally cherished by Americans that we shall, in spite of grave national defects, “win out” in the end, he has nevertheless, in direct and unadorned statements, pointed out our faults. As an example of his characteristic straightforwardness of speech, take the following sentence: “America has little occasion to think of foreign affairs, but some of her domestic difficulties are such as to demand that careful observation and unbroken reflection which neither her executive magistrates, nor her legislatures, nor any leading class among her people now give.” Mr. Bryce has never ceasedto insist that America suffers from lack of honest, courageous leadership in dealing with such problems as municipal evils and the insidious influence of “vested interests.” Our heedlessness and indifference to public matters is our national sin, but Mr. Bryce foresees a cure for our defects in the increasing zeal with which the younger generation is assuming the public burden; but how great must be its zeal and how steady its purpose if anything is to be accomplished, one is made poignantly aware by reading the account of the Tammany Ring inThe American Commonwealth.
When a man of Mr. Bryce’s ability and experience points out definitely the chief obstacles to good citizenship and furthermore indicates the means by which these may be overcome, one may be as sure that he will say something which should be heeded as were the members of the House when he was a parliamentarian. In 1909, Mr. Bryce gave at Yale University a series of lectures which were later published by the Yale University Press under the titleHindrances to Good Citizenship. The main obstacles to good citizenship are definedas indolence, private self-interest, and party spirit.
The first lecture, “Indolence,” brings to mind the chapter inThe American Commonwealthon “The War Against Bossdom,” with its vigorous concluding words, “In America, as everywhere else in the world, the commonwealth suffers more often from apathy or shortsightedness in the upper classes, who ought to lead, than from ignorance or recklessness in the humbler classes, who generally are ready to follow when wisely led.”
In the second lecture, “Private Self-Interest,” Mr. Bryce states the causes which produce a body of citizens who care more about their own advancement than about the welfare of the country. The most important of these causes are tariff issues, appropriations of public money for local interests, governmental contracts, public officeholding,—all representing “the insidious power of money which knows how to play upon the self-interest of voters and legislators, polluting at its source the spring of Civic Duty.”
The third lecture considers party spirit asa hindrance to citizenship. Mr. Bryce acknowledges the practical necessity for parties in the management of popular governments, and also the perplexing difficulties of a party leader who must decide between conscience and party. There is nevertheless but one course open to him: he must follow his conscience; only he must carefully distinguish between conscience and angular independence which is lacking in common sense and in willingness to defer to others in unimportant matters. For the average man the question is a simple one; relieved of the burdens of party leadership, he should follow his intelligence rather than his party. A large number of independent voters secures most effectively the right administration of public business.
The last lecture in the series, “How to Overcome the Obstacles to Good Citizenship,” suggests various means by which a more satisfactory body of citizens may be secured. In method and style this lecture is illustrative of the author’s peculiar strength in exposition.
Mr. Bryce’s writings are remarkable for thelucid organization of a wealth of detail into significant principles and sound conclusions; for vividness in the presentation of whatever pertains to humanity, and for gracious, winning English. One finds always in his work simplicity in the unfolding of material which has been carefully gathered and calmly judged. There is perfect clarity in the handling of a mass of detail, and such skillful subordination of it and masterly emphasis of important principles that the reader easily catches the bearing on the central thought of every illustration or description. There is also in the writing a solidity and firmness, a bracing stalwartness—qualities which are the result of the writer’s own sturdy nature. But this is not all. The author’s almost novelistic power of seeing persons and things makes his writing as vivid as a story; even his most abstract propositions are tangible and real. And the material is, moreover, so sympathetically and earnestly treated that it is at times lifted above mere pedestrian exposition and becomes warm with the feeling of the writer. The everyday words and unadorned sentences, infused with the spirit ofthe one who writes, become potent to stir slumbering ideals. Suddenly over the level way of mere intellectual matters falls a dreamy light, a Celtic graciousness of manner; and the reader no longer journeys along a mere brown path, but sees the familiar scenes of the way idealized by the touch of poetry. The value of skillful exposition as an asset for leadership, or for the accomplishment of any other purpose, Mr. Bryce fully appreciates. A command of language is a power possessed by nearly every one of the men, eminent in the nineteenth century, whom Mr. Bryce describes in hisStudies in Contemporary Biography. By means of it Mr. John Richard Green wrote the most brilliant history of modern times; through the stirring editorials of theNation, Mr. Godkin was able to arouse an indifferent American public to a more earnest consideration of the national welfare; and it was Mr. Gladstone’s gift of “noble utterance” which more than any other talent enabled him for many years to hold an authoritative political position. Mr. Bryce’s own rare power as a writer of vigorous, persuasive English is one ofthe qualities which has made him in a certain sense a citizen of the world with an almost world-wide influence.
However helpful Mr. Bryce’s method may be for the student who is attempting to understand and master the technique of successful English, it is the subject-matter which is primarily of importance. It is valuable for the student since it may serve to stimulate the investigation and expression of certain questions connected with the administration of public matters in his own town or city; and it may also suggest the explanation and judgment of measures proposed to secure better government, such as the Referendum. But the essential worth of the material lies in the fact that it is a tonic for relaxed vigilance in public affairs. It would be well to require every citizen of the United States to read in school daysThe American Commonwealth; one ventures to say that there would be, as a result, a steady advancement in the right understanding and fulfillment of civic duties; but even a limited acquaintance with Mr. Bryce should serve to define in clearer terms the elements of a saneand effective patriotism. And Mr. Bryce’s own life, unfalteringly and resolutely devoted to a just administration of governments, together with its unfailing graciousness in the most trying situations, furnishes an invigorating example of the truly successful statesman.
Ada L. F. Snell.