he also
terrifies himself with imaginary dangers. He does not even picture what
these dangers are: he conceives the unknown as always dangerous. When
you say to a realist "You must do this" or "You must not do that," he
instantly asks what will happen to him if he does (or does not, as the
case may be). Failing an unromantic convincing answer, he does just as
he pleases unless he can find for himself a real reason for refraining.
In short, though you can intimidate him, you cannot bluff him. But
you can always bluff the romantic person: indeed his grasp of real
considerations is so feeble that you find it necessary to bluff him even
when you have solid considerations to offer him instead. The campaigns
of Napoleon, with their atmosphere of glory, illustrate this. In
the Russian campaign Napoleon's marshals achieved miracles of bluff,
especially Ney, who, with a handful of men, monstrously outnumbered,
repeatedly kept the Russian troops paralyzed with terror by pure
bounce. Napoleon himself, much more a realist than Ney (that was why
he dominated him), would probably have surrendered; for sometimes the
bravest of the brave will achieve successes never attempted by the
cleverest of the clever. Wellington was a completer realist than
Napoleon. It was impossible to persuade Wellington that he was beaten
until he actually was beaten. He was unbluffable; and if Napoleon had
understood the nature of Wellington's strength instead of returning
Wellington's snobbish contempt for him by an academic contempt for
Wellington, he would not have left the attack at Waterloo to Ney and
D'Erlon, who, on that field, did not know when they were beaten, whereas
Wellington knew precisely when he was not beaten. The unbluffable
would have triumphed anyhow, probably, because Napoleon was an academic
soldier, doing the academic thing (the attack in columns and so forth)
with superlative ability and energy; whilst Wellington was an original
soldier who, instead of outdoing the terrible academic columns with
still more terrible and academic columns, outwitted them with the thin
red line, not of heroes, but, as this uncompromising realist never
hesitated to testify, of the scum of the earth.

Government by Bullies

These picturesque martial incidents are being reproduced every day in
our ordinary life. We are bluffed by hardy simpletons and headstrong
bounders as the Russians were bluffed by Ney; and our Wellingtons
are threadbound by slave