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V The Danger Signal In the last chapter an all too brief account was given of the sort of abuses of power and privilege which ultimately conspired completely to discredit aristocratic government in England and the Continent of Europe. In truth, however, the few details I gave as evidence of the persistent misrule of the powerful and privileged classes of Christendom throughout the period reviewed, were not essential to my argument; for this aspect of Europe's social history really lies embalmed in one single word in daily use by two of the greatest peoples of our Continent. The reader will easily be able to think of many words in the English language which recall whole chapters of history and national development. Sometimes the mere surname of a well-known figure enriches the language. Occasionally a word serves merely as the designation of a class or sect. We have, for instance, Simon Magus, whose name perpetuates the notion of infamous traffic in sacred things; Wellington with whom the illiterate associate only a particular kind of boot, and Gladstone who similarly suggests a travelling bag. Then we have Ned Lud, Burke and Boycott, who memorialize respectively the revolt against machinery in 1799, the murdering of people for the purpose of selling their bodies for dissection, and the shutting out from all human intercourse, or ostracizing, of one generally disapproved. There is no need to prolong the list. Such names as Dr. T. Bowdler, E. Clerihew, the Marquis de Sade, Martinet, Dr. Guillotin and Bernard Shaw will occur to the reader in this connection. The notable feature about all the words derived from these famous names is that their relation to the men whom they recall can now be easily discovered by merely consulting a dictionary.
Indeed, in view of the fact that all history has been written by partisans of one political school or another, and that there is no such thing as a Science of History, the lessons embedded and preserved in this one word are more likely to yield a true picture of the past than if the whole of the works of English, French and German historians were completely absorbed and digested. And what is this comprehensive term, briefly enshrining centuries of our social history, hinting at the course of our political evolution, exposing the behaviour of generations of a certain class in the community, and dually suggesting the fatal errors of those alleged "thinkers" whose reaction to this behaviour has shaped our present destiny." The reader will hardly believe it when he is told that whenever and wherever he perceives a red light, a signal summoning him to HALT, and any caution warning him to proceed no further, not to touch or handle a certain object or not to push open a closed door; whenever in fact he is told that he faces imminent peril if he ventures any further, and he sees one word conveying this counsel to him, the word in question is the one I have in mind. For it is the disyllable DANGER, perpetuating not merely countless famous and preponderatingly infamous names, but also an epitome of centuries of European history, of which I am thinking. No word in any other language than French or English preserves such a précis of bygone times. A student needs only to
For, in the etymology of this one word DANGER, a political tragedy of prodigious consequence lies concealed. It is a word whose modern sinister meaning developed gradually out of the innocent and faintly benevolent old French word, "dangier", signifying merely dominion, authority, jurisdiction — the relation of a lord or master to his dependant or subordinate (Dominium). Originally, all it implied was "lordship". To be in anyone's "danger" meant simply to be under his jurisdiction or authority. Chaucer in the fourteenth century still used the word in this sense, although by that time it had already begun to acquire unpleasant connotations. Lydgate, his junior by some 30 years, in the 42nd stanza of his A Sayenge of the Nightyngale, speaks of Christ's bearing His Cross to Cavalry to make us strong against the "dangier" (authority, influence) of non-Christian forces, Shakespeare, in the Merchant of Venice, makes Portia ask Antonio whether he stands in Shylock's danger or not — meaning Shylock's power (Act IV, Sc. 1). And the New English Dictionary quotes a passage from Bishop Ridley's works (1550) to illustrate how the word was still being used merely as a synonym for authority or control, in the sixteenth century. "They put themselves", wrote the Bishop, "in the danger of King Ahab saying, 'Behold we have heard that the kings of the house of Israel are pitiful and merciful.'" Do we need to indulge in much ardent guessing in order to discover how a word originally meaning no more than authority, control, jurisdiction, could ultimately so consistently, and in the end permanently, have earned the sinister connotation of jeopardy, fatal hazard, mortal peril, as to serve even the most
What could have happened to turn this innocent word which originally promised only protection, justly exercised authority, and equitable control, into a token of threatening ruin? What must the powerful have unremittingly done in order insensibly to make the populace of two such countries as France and England understand the word as meaning no more than a signal of alarm, a warning of Nemesis? In view of the crowd's ignorance of psychology and history it is not astonishing that centuries of disreputable conduct on the part of their rulers should have culminated in their transforming "dangier" into danger and have convinced them of the worthlessness of patriarchal control and authority — i.e. Aristocracy. For the masses are not composed of thinkers, and such hasty, makeshift substitutes for Power that had been abused by a breed of men who had no business to be masters at all such substitutes as Liberalism, Democracy, Universal Suffrage must seem to an oppressed people the very essence of wisdom and political sanity. This, however, does not excuse the so-called "thinkers" (les clercs) from John Ball to Bernard Shaw, whom I have enumerated above, for having endorsed the desperate measures seized upon by an outraged mob who saw only danger in dangier. It does not excuse them for having failed to distinguish the sins of the magisterial class from the institution of Magistracy itself, and for having condemned the principle of the rule of the best before making sure that the sins of misrule had indeed been committed by the "Best". They would have needed only to look as far as Northern Italy, or back at ancient Egypt to have learned that dangier by no means necessarily spells danger. And if they blindly acquiesced in the hasty and makeshift substitutes for patriarchal rulership devised by upstart leaders of the mob, they confessed themselves as shallow and ill-informed as these upstart leaders themselves. Anarchy with all its perils and miseries is now fast spreading over England and France. The fanatical pursuit of so-called "Freedom" has culminated in the reign of universal licence; and as the Western World has long abandoned all belief in the possibility of a wise ruler class, no such class is now being bred.
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