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performing
statelessness
in
europe
S. E. WILMER
Performing Statelessness in Europe
 S.E. Wilmer

Performing
Statelessness in
Europe
S.E. Wilmer
Trinity College Dublin
Dublin, Ireland

ISBN 978-3-319-69172-5    ISBN 978-3-319-69173-2 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69173-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017958010

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Acknowledgements

I wish to thank some of the institutions and individuals who have helped
me in developing material for this book, particularly my colleagues in the
Drama Department and the Long Room Hub at Trinity College Dublin
and the Research Centre for Interweaving Performance Cultures at the
Freie Universität, Berlin. I am also indebted to many people who read and
commented on parts of this work in progress or offered advice: Azadeh
Sharifi, Samee Ullah, Warsame Ali Garare, Marco Galea, Vicki Cremona,
Fiona Macintosh, Erica Fischer-Lichte, Audronė Žukauskaitė, Christel
Weiler, Tania Wilmer-Tsui, Jean Graham Jones, Jisha Menon, David
Savran, Jenni Schnarr, Anna Lohse, Katrin Wächter, Herman Grech,
Nicolas Stemann, Ernest Allan Hausmann, Marina Carr, Anthony
Haughey, Holger Hartung, Maxi Obexer, Neil Blackadder, Ahmed Shah,
Nadia Grassmann, Dennis Kennedy, Brian Singleton, Matthew Causey,
Janelle Reinelt, Florian Borchmeyer, Janez Janša, James Harding, Bruce
McConachie, Freddie Rokem, Maria Slowey, Evan Winet, Rhona Trench,
Anika Marschall, Sruti Bala, Soldedad Pereyra, Isabelle Redfern, Emma
Cox, Alison Jeffers, Charlotte McIvor, Jason King, Lily Kelting, Katrin
Sieg, Jamie Trnka, Torsten Jost and Marja Wilmer. I also want to thank
Orla McGinnity, who proof-read the manuscript, Elske Janssen, who for-
mulated the index, and Tomas René and Vicky Bates at Palgrave Macmillan.
I am also grateful to Laura Gröndahl, the editor of Nordic Theatre Studies,
for permission to reuse parts of ‘The Spirit of Fluxus as a Nomadic Art
Movement’ published in Nordic Theatre Studies in 2014.

v
 Contents

1 Introduction   1

2 Recontextualization and Adaptation of Ancient

Greek Dramas  11

3 Performative Identification in Fictional Accounts  51

4 Documentary Theatre by and about Refugees  73

5 Unwed Mothers, Asylums and Immersive Theatre  97

6 Creating Dissensus and Cross-Identification 121

7 Subversive Identification and Over-Identification 139

8 Two Approaches to Nomadism: Fluxus and

Théâtre du Soleil 163

vii
viii Contents

9 The Institutional Response of the German Theatre 189

10 Conclusion 209

Bibliography 213

Index 233
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Ruth Negga as Antigone in the world premiere of The Burial at
Thebes by Seamus Heaney, Abbey Theatre, 2004. Photo:
Tom Lawlor 18
Fig. 2.2 Charges (Die Schutzbefohlenen) by Elfriede Jelinek directed by
Nicolas Stemann, Thalia Theater, Hamburg, 2014. Photo: Krafft
Angerer35
Fig. 3.1 Poster for Lampedusa, St. James Cavalier Theatre, Valetta, 2016.
Design: Faye Paris 63
Fig. 4.1 Andrea Thelemann on a revolving stage in Illegal Helpers (Illegale
Helfer) by Maxi Obexer at Hans Otto Theater, Potsdam, 2016.
Credit: Hans Otto Theater / H. L. Boehme 78
Fig. 5.1 Poster for Laundry, The Magdalene Laundry, Sean MacDermott
Street, Dublin, 2011. Photo: Owen Boss 108
Fig. 5.2 Sorcha Kenny in Laundry, directed by Louise Lowe, Dublin,
2011. Photo: Pat Redmond 110
Fig. 6.1 The Situation, devised by Yael Ronen and company, Maxim Gorki
Theater, Berlin, 2016. Photo: PR/Ute Langkafe/MAIFOTO.
(From left): Orit Nahmias, Maryam Abu Khaled, Yousef Sweid,
Ayhan Majid Agha, Karem Daoud, Dimitrij Schaad 127
Fig. 7.1 NSK, NSK State Sarajevo, 1995. Photo: IRWIN archive 144
Fig. 8.1 Sébastien Brottet-Michel, Serge Nicolaï, Sarkaw Gorany,
Dominique Jambert, Maurice Durozier, Virginie Colemyn,
Stéphanie Masson, Alba Gaïa Kraghede-Bellugi. The Last Caravan
Stop (Le Dernier Caravansérail (Odyssées)): Origines et destin,
‘ Sur la route de l’Australie’. Création collective du Théâtre du
Soleil dirigée par Ariane Mnouchkine, Cartoucherie, 2003.
© Michèle Laurent 178

ix
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

‘Our age […] is indeed the age of the refugee, the displaced person,
mass immigration’
—Edward Said (1984, p. 159)

Performing Statelessness in Europe examines recent performative work by

and about refugees and the dispossessed. Immigration has become one of
the most contentious topics in Europe today. While the fall of the Berlin
wall, the break-up of the Soviet Union and the creation of the Schengen
zone heralded a new dream of a free world, the period since 9/11 has
confirmed that globalization has resulted in the free movement of goods
but not of people. Barriers between nation-states have once more been
erected and the borders of the European Union (EU) have become a for-
tress against migration. Ongoing wars in the Middle East and Africa, and
poverty and authoritarian or unstable rule in Sub-Saharan African states
have made many people flee. Fifteen million Syrians and Iraqis have been
displaced. Moreover, the lawlessness in Libya (following the overthrow of
Gaddafi by Western powers) has endangered refugees from Africa and the
Middle East who have found themselves at the mercy of rival militias,
smugglers, and slave traders.1 The number of refugees drowning in the
Mediterranean while trying to get to Europe has steadily increased (with
more than 5,000 dying in 2016), and the total of displaced people in the
world has reached a record 65 million.2

© The Author(s) 2018 1

S.E. Wilmer, Performing Statelessness in Europe,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69173-2_1
2 S.E. WILMER

The EU has failed in its attempt to agree on a coordinated approach to

immigration. In her book Security Integration in Europe, Mai’a K. Davis
Cross (2011, p. 5) provides some of the common reasons offered for EU
countries failing to cooperate and share the responsibility to provide
asylum:

First, the many member states have vastly different languages, cultures, cus-
toms, and identities, all of which pose significant obstacles to shifting
national and political allegiances to Brussels. Second, the member states
have entrenched constitutional and judicial traditions that they are not will-
ing to give up. Finally, and perhaps most commonly cited, EU member
states do not seem to be able to work together when it comes to foreign and
security policy, thus preventing the EU from projecting itself as a coherent
international player.

For example, despite being in the Schengen zone, certain states (such
as Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Poland and Sweden)
reintroduced border controls in 2016 following a large influx of refugees
in 2015.
Because the need for asylum has been increasing and the problem is not
being solved by political means, artists have been using theatrical perfor-
mance to intervene in the political arena to offer insight and new perspec-
tives. Through specific examples and case studies, this book assesses
strategies by creative artists to address matters relating to social justice.
Chapter 2 considers adaptations of Greek tragedy that reflect traditional
ethical values from ancient Greece that have been reemphasized recently
by philosophers such as Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. Modern
versions of such plays as Aeschylus’ The Suppliants recall the ancient Greek
duty to welcome a guest and provide hospitality. They confront the situa-
tion whereby the EU, rather than welcoming refugees, has generally tried
to discourage or impede them, thereby gaining the reputation of ‘fortress
Europe’.
Many European countries have closed their borders, reinforced and
extended their border defences, banned air and sea travel for those with-
out visas,3 and introduced intimidating practices. Following the creation
of the Schengen zone,4 the EU created the European Agency for
Management of the External Borders (Frontex) to monitor its external
borders. With a budget of many millions of euros, Frontex, based in
Warsaw, oversees border control around the entire European Union.
Rather than safeguarding the rights of refugees, it has focused its efforts
 INTRODUCTION 3

on their interception and deportation (see Cross 2011, p. 58). For exam-
ple, in 2006 Frontex launched Operation Hera to prevent migration from
Morocco, Senegal and Mauritania to the Canary Islands. According to
Frontex (2017), ‘The route between Senegal, Mauritania and Morocco
and the Spanish Canary Islands was once the busiest irregular entry point
for the whole of Europe, peaking at 32,000 migrants arriving on the
islands in 2006.’ With the help of the Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and
Finnish governments and ‘following bilateral agreements between Spain
and Senegal and Mauritania, including repatriation agreements’ (Frontex
2017), Frontex used planes and boats and ‘the installation of the SIVE
maritime surveillance system’ (Frontex 2017) to intercept boats leaving
the African coast, reducing the number of migrants to a mere 170 by
2012. By blocking the Atlantic Ocean route to Europe, Frontex thereby
forced refugees to cross North Africa by land and then to cross the
Mediterranean Sea by boat. More recently, Frontex has concentrated on
blocking the humanitarian route through the Balkans, and the routes from
Turkey to Greece. This has resulted in more refugees trying to make the
deadly journey from Libya to Italy. Like the women in Aeschylus’
Suppliants, refugees surviving the boat trip across the Mediterranean
arrive in Europe to request protection. However, European leaders tend
not to be as accommodating as King Pelasgos of Argos.
Modern versions of The Suppliants, such as Elfriede Jelinek’s Charges
(Die Schutzbefohlenen), demonstrate the hardship encountered by refu-
gees once they arrive in Europe to seek asylum from unsympathetic gov-
ernment officials. Jelinek’s version was inspired by events in Austria where
a group of refugees took sanctuary in a central Viennese church and went
on hunger strike, demanding better conditions. Jelinek uses Aeschylus’
play as little more than a pretext for critiquing governmental policies and
nationalist attitudes towards refugees. Her play has become one of the
most celebrated pieces to deal with refugee issues in German-speaking
theatres, having been performed in more than ten separate productions
between 2014 and 2016.
Chapter 3 discusses plays that encourage empathy and identification
not only with refugees but also with those offering hospitality. Two spe-
cific examples, Donal O’Kelly’s Asylum! Asylum! and Anders Lustgarten’s
Lampedusa, depict fictional characters who have experienced extreme dan-
ger in their lives. In Asylum! Asylum! the protagonist is a refugee who has
been tortured in his home village in Nigeria and tries unsuccessfully to
obtain asylum in Ireland. In Lampedusa a refugee from Mali survives a
4 S.E. WILMER

boat trip to Lampedusa and waits desperately for his wife to arrive by the
same route. Interestingly, European helpers become the pivotal figures in
the plays as they undergo a transformation in their values with which the
spectators are encouraged to identify. Amongst other productions, this
chapter examines a production of Lampedusa in Malta that was particu-
larly apposite given Malta’s proximity to the island of Lampedusa. Asylum!
Asylum! and Lampedusa demonstrate the damage done to individuals by
the restrictive EU policies, but they indicate hope for a possible change in
attitudes.
Chapter 4 reviews various types of documentary theatre that record
actual events in the lives of individual refugees, relying mainly on inter-
views and verbatim speeches. Such plays try to create a sense of authentic-
ity in their representations even when, as in Maxi Obexer’s Illegal Helpers
(Illegale Helfer), the scenes, based on real people and events, have been
slightly modified for dramatic purposes. Like Illegal Helpers, which focuses
on helpers in the host country who act illegally to assist immigrants in
danger of being deported, performances such as Tribunal 12 and Case of
Farmaconisi resemble judicial inquiries to investigate how justice is denied
in current legal procedures. Other types of documentary theatre include
productions devised and performed by refugees who recount their past
experiences and ambitions, using their own bodies as evidence, such as in
Letters Home by the Refugee Club Impulse in Berlin and Dear Home Office
by Phosphorus Theatre in London.
Chapter 5 takes the book in a somewhat different direction with an
analysis of an unusual type of asylum where unwed Irish mothers were
confined in institutions, deprived of their children and identities, and used
as slave labour. The chapter indicates the resemblance of the unwed moth-
ers to refugees in their unlimited detention and their reduction to a social
status equivalent to what Giorgio Agamben calls ‘bare life’. It also demon-
strates how theatrical and filmic performances as well as journalistic
research have shone a light on those who were rendered invisible to soci-
ety and have served as a means to illuminate and denounce past practices.
Films such as Philomena, with the Oscar-nominated Judy Dench in the
role of Philomena Lee, and dramas such as the deeply disturbing Laundry,
directed by Louise Lowe and performed in an immersive style in a former
Dublin convent, have awakened the Irish public to a misguided practice
(which finally ended in 1996) and prompted a protest movement demand-
ing transparency and redress. As the Irish government has only begun to
investigate the practices of these institutions and the extent of the
 INTRODUCTION 5

unmarked graves of the mothers and their babies throughout the country,
it is too early to predict the results of this inquiry.
Chapter 6 examines plays that polarize characters and reveal the prob-
lem of statelessness in greater relief. Rancière’s concept of dissensus is
deployed here to explore how Yael Ronen, for example, devises dialectical
material for characters with opposing viewpoints and backgrounds in her
productions of Third Generation: a Work in Progress and The Situation,
and how Caryl Churchill divides the audience in her controversial play
Seven Jewish Children. The chapter also discloses a tactic of cross-­
identification in such pieces as Robert Schneider’s Dirt and Amos Elkana’s
The Journey Home to create a dissensus in which the central characters,
based on real people, identify problematically with another group in soci-
ety, decentring the basis of national, religious and ethnic identities. In the
case of Dirt, an Iraqi illegal immigrant named Sad identifies with the racist
values of German nationalists. In The Journey Home, the Arab protagonist
converts to Judaism to raise a Jewish family, but when his country of
Palestine becomes divided, he converts back to Islam to raise a Muslim
family. By creating dissensus and cross-identification, these plays pose
social and political problems for the spectators to consider.
Chapter 7 employs subversive identification as a strategy to exaggerate
and decry nationalist policies. Performance artists NSK, Janez Janša,
Christoph Schlingensief, and the Centre for Political Beauty have pro-
vided startling images to call attention to the authoritarian role of the
nation-state. Despite avowedly emphasizing European over national iden-
tity in order to reduce nationalism and nationalist policies, the EU has
done little to counteract the exclusive privileges of citizenship. By continu-
ing to stress the rights of the citizen over the human rights of individuals,
the EU relegates the asylum-seeker to a liminal state or a kind of no man’s
land. As a non-citizen and thus virtually a non-person, the asylum-seeker
is vulnerable to deportation at any time. NSK in Slovenia has parodied the
exclusionary practices of the nation-state by creating their own nation in
time rather than in territory and by establishing their own embassies and
issuing their own passports. Similarly, the Janez Janša trio has critiqued
state identity papers by changing their names to that of their right-wing
Prime Minister and displaying their new identity cards as works of art.
Christoph Schlingensief has lampooned the xenophobic policies of the far-­
right FPÖ party in Austria that entered a coalition government in 2000 by
staging Please Love Austria as a big brother event. Housing refugees for a
week in an industrial container on a main square in Vienna, Schlingensief
6 S.E. WILMER

invited the public to vote on whom to deport. Like the Yes Men in
America, the Centre for Political Beauty (CPB) in Berlin has impersonated
government officials to announce changes in government policies on
immigration. For example, the CPB publicized a plan that they attributed
to an Austrian government official (and which was reported by Al Jazeera:
see Manisera 2015) to support the needs of refugees by constructing a
230-kilometre Jean-Monnet Bridge across the Mediterranean from
Tunisia to Italy at a cost of 230 billion euros to be completed by 2030. By
parodying government policies and over-identifying with right wing poli-
ticians, these artists have called into question normative values and
policies.
Chapter 8 reviews two contrasting artistic groups, Fluxus and the
Théâtre du Soleil, that employ a nomadic approach as an alternative
behaviour. By applying Rosi Braidotti’s analysis of nomadic subjectivity,
the chapter reveals how these two groups exhibit specific features favoured
by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, such as transnationalism, communal
property, becoming minoritarian, originality of approach, and desubjecti-
vation. Although the Théâtre du Soleil is a tightly organized professional
group compared with the loosely structured and amateur policies of the
Fluxus artistic movement, they exhibit many nomadic features. Both have
been experimental in developing new artistic forms and in their original
ways of thinking, and both have been egalitarian in welcoming different
nationalities and ethnicities into their company. Although Fluxus was
based in New York, their inaugural concerts took place in Wiesbaden, and
subsequent events occurred throughout Europe, with regional headquar-
ters in Western and Eastern Europe and strong links with Asia. The
Théâtre du Soleil, while based in Paris, travels throughout the world, and
the members of its company hail from a variety of lands and cultures,
speaking many different languages. Their examples of openness and col-
laborative procedures offer encouraging models for a more accommodat-
ing society. In particular the Théâtre du Soleil addresses the dangers and
hardships of migration through its production of The Last Caravan Stop
(Le Dernier Caravansérail). In one scene a boat of refugees, having sur-
vived huge storms in crossing the sea, is ‘intercepted by Australian border
guards descending from the sky, machine-men in black helmets and gog-
gles, dangling unnaturally from the air as their artificially amplified voices
intone over the roar of helicopters, “You are illegally in these waters! You
must turn back!”’ (Playgoer 2005). The scene was based on an incident in
2001 when an Indonesian boat carrying more than 400 immigrants was in
 INTRODUCTION 7

danger of sinking near Australia, and a Norwegian tanker, Tampa, rescued

them. However, the Australian government refused them permission to
land and sent out troops to deal with them instead. Despite international
condemnation, Prime Minister John Howard held firm and transferred
the boat people to a military frigate and sent them off to New Zealand and
the island country of Nauru. Howard (2001) famously proclaimed, ‘We
will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they
come.’ The Théâtre du Soleil’s production of The Last Caravan Stop as
well as the policy of their company reflects a much more egalitarian
approach than that of many governments.
Chapter 9, rather than examining specific performances, considers the
way in which German theatre institutions have demonstrated a positive
attitude in welcoming refugees. In September 2015, the journal
Nachtkritik identified the activities of more than sixty theatres that were
initiating humanitarian actions, ranging from running welcome cafes,
organizing language classes, offering accommodation, and staging perfor-
mances with, by or about refugees. One of the main motivators of these
actions was the Turkish-born Shermin Langhoff who petitioned the gov-
ernment to assist refugees and who transformed the famous Maxim Gorki
Theatre from a white German ensemble to a post-migrant enterprise.
At the time of writing in 2017, EU practices and policies continue to
evolve amidst the rise of nationalism in many European countries. The
electoral gains of far-right leaders, (such as Marine Le Pen in France, Geert
Wilders in the Netherlands, and Norbert Hofer in Austria), the decision of
Britain to exit the EU, the nationalist policies in Central and Eastern
European countries such as Hungary and Poland, and the anti-­immigration
actions of US President Donald Trump do not bode well for refugees.
Many countries resort to detention as a means of preventing asylum-­
seekers from participating in the society until their case has been thor-
oughly investigated and their status determined. The United Kingdom
detains a portion of asylum-seekers on a somewhat arbitrary basis, some-
times locking them up in detention centres along with those who had been
refused asylum, such as in the Campsfield House, operated by a private
security firm. Since this particular detention centre opened in 1993, it has
experienced riots, fires, hunger strikes and suicides, as methods for protest-
ing the conditions (see BBC 1994).5 In Central and Eastern Europe deten-
tion is frequently used as well as other forms of inhibition. For example,
even though the EU considers the detention of children to be ­dangerous,
Hungary announced in 2017 that it was detaining all asylum-seekers over
8 S.E. WILMER

the age of fourteen in converted shipping containers at their border

(Rankin 2017). Moreover, the EU has been resourcing detention centres
outside of the EU so that refugees are not able to enter the EU to ask for
asylum.
As this book ends with a chapter affirming a progressive stance by the
German theatre institutions, it offers some hope at a micro level for a more
open response to immigration, egalitarianism and becoming other.
However, it is also clear that at a macro level a new approach to the rela-
tionship between citizenship and human rights is needed. The nation-state
has become a fortress to protect its citizens against the immigrant. Despite
EU efforts at common policies, member countries have continued to
operate their own idiosyncratic practices that frequently contravene UN
conventions on the protection of refugees. As Mai’a Davis Cross (2011,
p. 61) points out, ‘the EU focuses more on integration of border security
than on achieving a comprehensive approach that balances the need to
protect EU citizens with the need to respect foreign nationals’ rights.’
Moreover, as Judith Butler and Agamben have shown, governmentally
imposed ‘states of exception’ or states of emergency have become the
norm in which anyone can lose their rights and freedom of movement.6
Butler (2004, p. 51) argues, ‘with the suspension of law comes a new
exercise of state sovereignty’. What is needed, therefore, and what these
creative artists advocate, using a variety of strategies, is not an increase in
sovereignty but a greater emphasis on human rights, and in particular the
rights of the non-citizen.

Notes
1. For the recent development of a slave trade and slave auctions in Libya, see
Graham-Harrison (2017).
2. See Guterres (2015).
3. The European regulation (EU Directive 200l/51/EC) prevents refugees
from flying directly to an EU country and makes airlines and shipping lines
financially responsible for the return of passengers arriving in EU countries
without valid travel documents, as well as being potentially subject to a
large fine (EML 2001). By this regulation the EU effectively requires the
airlines and shipping lines to vet passengers to identify refugees. Thus the
airlines and shipping lines have been reluctant to take any passengers with-
out valid travel documents, and this had led to unfortunate consequences.
In one case in 1992, according to Andy Storey (1994), Director of the
Irish Refugee Council, ‘seven stowaways discovered on a boat to France
 INTRODUCTION 9

were knocked unconscious and thrown overboard, because the captain

feared being fined if the group claimed asylum in France: six of the stow-
aways drowned.’ In another case ‘British airline staff prevented three
Kurdish asylum-seekers from leaving a plane at Heathrow—this led to
their return to Turkey where they were severely tortured for 34 days’
(Storey 1994).
4. The Schengen zone is the passport-free area in the EU where national bor-
ders have been eliminated. It also includes non-EU states Norway, Iceland,
and Switzerland, but does not include the UK and Ireland.
5. The detention centre was subsequently converted into a prison.
6. See for example Judith Butler (2004, p. 97); and Agamben (2005, pp. 3–4,
p. 22).

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University Press).
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date accessed 29 April 2017.
Butler, J. (2004) Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (New York:
Verso).
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Manisera, S. (2015) ‘Could a Bridge over the Mediterranean Save Refugees?’, Al

Jazeera, 22 December. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/12/
bridge-mediterranean-save-refugees-151216081619467.html, date accessed 20
April 2017.
Playgoer (2005) ‘Review: Le Dernier Caravansérail’, Playgoer, 26 July. http://
playgoer.blogspot.com/2005/07/playgoer-review-le-dernier.html, date accessed
29 April 2017.
Rankin, J. (2017) ‘Detaining Child Refugees Should be Last Resort, Brussels
Warns’, The Guardian, 13 April, p. 17.
Said, E. (1984) ‘Reflections on Exile’, Granta, 13, 157–172.
Storey, A. (1994) ‘Asylum! Asylum! Programme Note’ (Dublin: Abbey Theatre).
 CHAPTER 2

Recontextualization and Adaptation

of Ancient Greek Dramas

The refugee is a familiar character in ancient Greek tragedy. Medea,

Orestes, the Children of Herakles, Oedipus in Oedipus at Colonus, and the
daughters of Danaos in Aeschylus’ The Suppliants all seek asylum. In
Aeschylus’ The Suppliants, the fifty daughters of Danaos ask King Pelasgos
for protection in Argos. Likewise, the Children of Herakles flee to Athens
to get away from Eurystheus who is determined to kill them. Medea, who
refers to herself as apolis or stateless, persuades Aegeus to grant her asylum
in Athens before she wreaks vengeance on Jason. In Oedipus at Colonus,
Oedipus asks King Theseus for sanctuary in Colonus and succeeds in find-
ing a final resting place.
These plays not only depict uprooted and homeless persons seeking
protection, they also demonstrate the importance of hospitality or xenia
and the ritual of supplication or hiketeia as a moral practice in ancient
Athens (a process discussed in detail in Gould (1973) and Naiden
(2006)). It is significant that in Oedipus at Colonus, Oedipus provides a
kind of sanctuary for Athens in return for being granted one. By allowing
Oedipus to be buried in Colonus, Theseus ensures that Athens will be
protected in the future. The play thereby emphasizes the potential benefit
of looking after asylum-seekers. Thus these ancient Greek dramas easily
lend themselves to the issue of refugees today and have often been appro-
priated to legitimize the concept of hospitality, a social duty which was
revered not only by the ancient Greeks, but which has also been stressed
as fundamental to ethics by modern philosophers such as Emmanuel

© The Author(s) 2018 11

S.E. Wilmer, Performing Statelessness in Europe,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69173-2_2
12 S.E. WILMER

Levinas (1991a) and Jacques Derrida (Derrida and Dufourmantelle

2000, p. 151). As Judith Butler (2004, pp. xvii–xviii) writes, ‘Emmanuel
Levinas offers a conception of ethics that rests upon an apprehension of
the precariousness of life, one that begins with the precarious life of the
Other’. In addition, writers and directors have used other Greek tragedies
such as Antigone, The Trojan Women and Hecuba to focus on the rights
of the dispossessed, the vulnerable, and the disenfranchised. Moreover,
these plays have carried all the more impact as the world has been experi-
encing, according to António Guterres (2015), when he was United
Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees, ‘the highest levels of forced
displacement in recorded history.’
Without substantially altering the texts, recent productions have carried
strong resonances of the current refugee crisis. For example, in the ancient
theatre at Siracusa in Italy in 2015, a production of Aeschylus’ Suppliants
conjured up images of refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean, partly
because Sicily has been one of the primary destinations of refugees in
recent years. In the original text, fifty women who describe themselves as
‘a sunburnt race’ (Aeschylus 1992, p. 11) have crossed the Mediterranean
from Egypt and arrived in Argos to ask for asylum to escape fifty men, the
sons of King Aigyptos, who are pursuing them. Pelasgos, the King of
Argos, after deliberating over the consequences of protecting the women
and asking for his subjects’ approval, agrees to shelter them. And so the
tragedy ends happily, but with the ongoing fear of a possible attack.
Oliver Taplin (2015), in reviewing the performance in Siracusa,
described how he entered the theatre with the political relevance of the
play in mind because of ‘the sight of so many recently arrived migrants
from Africa in the streets of Catania.’ The production, directed by Moni
Ovadia, was rendered in Sicilian and modern Greek, with the addition of
a narrator who impersonates Aeschylus serving as a commentator on the
action and informing the audience about the missing parts of the trilogy.
The chorus of women seeking asylum was, according to Taplin (2015),
the most impressive aspect of the show: ‘As I saw it, the primary drivers of
Moni Ovadia’s production were not journalistic, but were ethnographic
and musical. The centrality of the chorus was embraced. Through them Le
Supplici showed how the arrival of foreign cultures from ancient lands
bring fresh sights—clothing, utensils, gestures and movements.’ Taplin
(2015) also praised the director for the ‘superb control of group move-
ment, beautifully exotic costumes, attractive choreography, and music
that, although played on often unfamiliar instruments, was nonetheless
 RECONTEXTUALIZATION AND ADAPTATION OF ANCIENT GREEK DRAMAS 13

tuneful and accessible’. The director Moni Ovadia (in Taplin 2015)
­commented on the relevance of his production to the political situation
without having to alter the text:

We knew from the very beginning that our Suppliants had to be politically
and socially relevant and especially connected with the dramatic problem of
present immigration of people landing on our shores asking to be received.
It was not only a demand of ourselves, the reality itself was asking it,
Aeschylus himself keeps asking it from the depth of times, from the core of
his tragedy. There was no need to show it explicitly.

Likewise, David Greig’s version of The Suppliants at the Edinburgh

Lyceum in 2016 updated the language by employing a modern poetic
style of English, but otherwise stuck very closely to the original text.
Because of the relevance of the play to the fierce debates in the United
Kingdom about refugees during the ‘Brexit’ referendum, he did not need
to adapt the play to make it seem more relevant, and used fifty local
Scottish women rather than immigrants to perform the chorus. Greig (in
Brooks 2016) argued that it was unnecessary to make the play more rele-
vant: ‘There will be people who say, “Well they’ve made this all about
asylum seekers, and that line about Syria has obviously been placed”, and
the frustrating thing is that all that stuff is already there—it isn’t imposed
by us.’ Ramin Gray, the director of the play (in Brooks 2016) added,
describing the circumstances of the plot: ‘We’ve just allowed 50 refugee
women in, but the worry is that this may lead to war in our city. The
debate at the heart of the play is the current debate’.

Antigone
In addition to contemporary productions that conjure up images of state-
less persons through performances of the original texts, contemporary
playwrights have adapted ancient tragedies to emphasize the plight of the
dispossessed.1 Antigone is a play that sometimes serves as a vehicle for call-
ing attention to the position of the stateless person and has been adapted
to comment on the current refugee situation. She has been used as an
emblematic figure to embody the excluded, the dispossessed or the Other
in society. While the chorus refer to her as autonomos because she favours
her own laws instead of those of the state, she refers to herself as metoikos
(Sophocles 1996, pp. 42–3). It is interesting that, despite being a member
14 S.E. WILMER

of the royal household of Thebes, she uses the term metoikos, which
Liddell and Scott (1940, p. 1121) translate as a ‘settler from abroad, alien
resident in a foreign city’. One wonders in what way she considers herself
to be a foreign settler or an alien resident, situated somewhere between
being accepted and not accepted in society. Is it because her father,
Oedipus, had been exiled from Thebes and she therefore feels half-exiled?
Or is it because she is caught between the laws of the state and the laws of
the gods in wanting to bury her brother? Is it because her ontological
status is uncertain as a result of her incestuous family relationships? Or is
it because she is in a liminal state between life and death as she goes off to
be buried alive? In any case, as discussed by Butler (2004) and Castro
(2013), it seems evident that she is referring to a psychological rather than
a political status, a state of vulnerability and precarity in her attempt to
mourn for the ungrievable body of her brother.
However, it is important to mention that recent interpretations, which
tend to provide Antigone with the higher moral ground and the more
sympathetic position, are not inevitable. For example, Hegel regarded the
play as pitting the law of the state against the law of the family in an equal
balance. He concluded that Antigone was a danger to the state and that
Creon was justified in defending the laws of the state over the concerns of
the individual. Generalizing from his discussion of Antigone, Hegel
(1977, p. 288) referred to women, because of their concern for individual
family members, as ‘the everlasting irony […] of the community’. Hegel’s
views continued to influence nineteenth- and twentieth-century interpre-
tations of Antigone, as George Steiner (1984) has shown.2 Jean Anouilh’s
version, produced in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1944, depicted Antigone as
an irrational and uncompromising character juxtaposed with the more
mature and amenable figure of Creon who (like Marshal Pétain of the
Vichy Regime) has to make uncomfortable decisions in a war-torn coun-
try. Creon offers to ignore and hide Antigone’s crime. But when she
refuses, he has her executed. As detailed by Fleming (2006, p. 168), the
production caused a major controversy in Paris, with the collaborationist
press more favourably disposed towards the performance than those in the
resistance.3 More recently, Jacques Lacan (1992, p. 263) viewed Antigone
as ‘inhuman’ and as exhibiting an uncontrollable death drive: ‘In effect,
Antigone herself has been declaring from the beginning: “I am dead and
I desire death” […] she pushes to the limit the realization of something
that might be called the pure and simple desire of death as such. She incar-
nates that desire’ (Lacan 1992, pp. 281–2).4 Slavoj Žižek (2001, p. 163)
 RECONTEXTUALIZATION AND ADAPTATION OF ANCIENT GREEK DRAMAS 15

took this Lacanian approach even further, considering her actions and her
death wish to testify to a self-destructive ‘monstrosity’.5
Despite the Hegelian interpretation of the play, which demonstrates
the superior claim of the community over that of the individual, as well as
the proto-fascist adaptation by Anouilh and the Lacanian psychoanalytic
approach that portray Antigone as determined to die, recent productions
have often represented her as defending human rights in defiance of an
oppressive and arbitrary authority. In particular they have used the play to
call attention to the oppressive conditions in specific recent contexts,
almost inevitably stressing the rectitude of Antigone’s position.
Some productions in the last few decades have employed Antigone as
a kind of homo sacer. Giorgio Agamben discusses the notion of homo sacer
as ‘nuda vita’—(variously translated as ‘bare life’, ‘mere life’ or ‘naked
life’). It implies a life with no ethical value, thus a person who can be
killed with impunity. It is originally a concept in Roman law that permits
the killing of people with this exceptional legal status. In the modern
world, Agamben (1998, pp. 126–80) applied the notion of homo sacer
particularly to Jews in concentration camps, and also to other people of
uncertain legal status such as refugees, asylum-seekers, Roma, the men-
tally ill and illegal immigrants. More recently, Judith Butler (Butler and
Spivak 2007, pp. 40–4) has applied the term to stateless people (for
example Palestinians), and suspected terrorists, especially those detained
in centres such as Guantánamo Bay.6
In The Island, devised by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston
Ntshona and staged first in Cape Town and London in 1973, the two
prisoners on Robben Island, after a hard day’s meaningless labour, use
their evenings in their cell to prepare for a truncated performance of
Antigone. Winston, who takes the part of Antigone in the play within a
play, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for his involvement in guer-
rilla activities against the apartheid regime. In the isolation of a prison cell
on an island off the coast of Cape Town where he expects eventually to
die, Winston holds a status resembling the living death of Antigone impris-
oned in her cave. In the character of Antigone, he concludes the play with
a speech that merges his own situation with that of hers: ‘I go now on my
last journey. I must leave the light and day forever for the Island, strange
and cold, to be lost between life and death. So to my grave, my everlasting
prison, condemned alive to solitary death […] I go now to my living
death, because I honoured those things to which honour belongs’ (Fugard
1993, p. 227).
16 S.E. WILMER

Antigona Furiosa by Griselda Gambaro, first staged in Buenos Aires in

1986, portrays the experience of the ‘disappeared’ during the Argentine
dictatorship from 1976 to 1983 and the mothers and relatives who pro-
tested on the Plaza de Mayo against their disappearance. By contrast with
other versions of Antigone, in this adaptation the brother has vanished,
reflecting the situation in Argentina where the police arrested dissidents
and terrorists and never released them alive (except in some cases drop-
ping them from aeroplanes). The head of the government, Lieutenant
General Jorge Rafael Videla, (in Nelli 2010, p. 360) commented on this
situation at the time, ‘[A]s long as (somebody) is missing (desaparecido),
they cannot have any particular treatment, they are an enigma, a desapare-
cido, they do not have an entity, they are not there, neither dead nor alive,
they are desaparecidos’. Therefore, in this adaptation, there is no body for
Antigone to bury, and so she claims that her own body will be the grave of
her brother, a site of memory (see Nelli 2010).
In Janusz Glowacki’s Antigone in New York (staged at the Arena Stage7
in Washington, DC in 1993 and later translated and performed in Germany,
Poland and other countries in Europe), Anita, the Antigone figure, tries to
reclaim the body of Paulie, her dead lover, who has been removed by the
authorities to be buried in an unmarked grave. Anita, a homeless immi-
grant from Puerto Rico, wants to bury Paulie in a Manhattan public park
where she lives. As both a homeless person and an immigrant, Anita’s legal
and ontological status is ill-defined. Her friend Sasha tells her: ‘We have to
get indoors. When you live outdoors no one thinks you are a person’
(Glowacki 1997, p. 72). Moreover, because it is dark when her friends
retrieve the body and mistake another corpse for Paulie’s, ironically Anita
ends up burying someone else in the park instead of her lover. Eventually,
the police close down the park, erecting a ten-foot-high barbed wire fence
around it, and rendering Anita’s status even more insecure. After trying
unsuccessfully to climb over the fence to return to Paulie’s grave, she hangs
herself on the main gate of the park. The authorities take her body to be
buried in an unmarked grave, sadly rejected by civil society.8
These three productions bear a disturbing relationship with the 2004
production of The Burial at Thebes, a version of Antigone by Seamus Heaney
directed by a Canadian theatre director, Lorraine Pintal, at the Abbey
Theatre in Dublin.9 The Burial at Thebes supported Antigone’s moral posi-
tion as much through production techniques as through the text, with
Creon dressed like a pompous and arrogant Latin American dictator in a
white suit with red sash and medallion, recklessly wielding his authority.10
 RECONTEXTUALIZATION AND ADAPTATION OF ANCIENT GREEK DRAMAS 17

Antigone demonstrated her autonomy11 and strength of character from the

opening moments of the play, in a dance sequence with her fiancé Haimon
during which she left him abandoned on the stage. From her opening lines,
which followed this mimed sequence, she indicated her determination and
sense of urgency, especially through Heaney’s use of trimeter for her lines
compared to the more languorous tetrameter of the chorus.12

Ismene, quick, come here!

What’s to become of us?
Why are we always the ones? (Heaney 2004, p. 1)

As a woman of action and no regrets, Antigone forcefully challenged

Creon’s authority in the performance such that his fear for his status rang
true:

Have I to be
The woman of the house and take her orders? (Heaney 2004, p. 22)

And later:

No woman here is going to be allowed

To walk all over us. Otherwise, as men
We’ll be disgraced. (Heaney 2004, p. 31)

At the same time, the emphasis on gender politics in the production

served as an analogy for the geopolitical relationships in the text. The text
bears witness to the indelible marks of colonialism and oppression in Irish
history, and to the process of disengagement from it. This is quite a common
trope in post-colonial discourse. As Williams and Chrisman (1993, p. 18)
have argued, ‘For some theorists and critics, colonial, imperial and indeed
post-colonial or national discourses are largely allegories of gender contests.’
Thus, Ireland has often been posited as the feminine Other in relation to the
aggressive male British empire, and so, in a Romantic nationalist or post-
colonial interpretation, Antigone represents an oppressed Ireland fighting
for her rights. Antigone as Ireland (or the nationalist community in Northern
Ireland) is clearly given the morally superior position in Heaney’s adapta-
tion, justifying action as the repressed feminine Other against the colonial
oppressor, whether it involves acts of civil disobedience, hunger strikes or
even more violent acts. With regard to Creon’s edict, Antigone says (see
Fig. 2.1):
18 S.E. WILMER

Fig. 2.1 Ruth Negga as Antigone in the world premiere of The Burial at Thebes
by Seamus Heaney, Abbey Theatre, 2004. Photo: Tom Lawlor
 RECONTEXTUALIZATION AND ADAPTATION OF ANCIENT GREEK DRAMAS 19

I chose to disregard it […]

If I had to live and suffer in the knowledge
That Polyneices was lying above ground
Insulted and defiled, that would be worse
Than having to suffer any doom of yours. (Heaney 2004, p. 21)

And later:

I never did a nobler thing than bury

My brother Polyneices […]
There’s no shame in burying a brother. (Heaney 2004, p. 23)

Moreover, Haimon argues that the people support Antigone:

As far as they’re concerned,

She should be honoured—a woman who rebelled! (Heaney 2004, p. 31)

In explaining the reasons for his adaptation, Heaney (2005b,

pp. 169–73) indicates that the British treatment of Irish people in Ireland
over the centuries helped him find a voice for Antigone as well as a moral
context for her stance. In thinking about the struggle between Antigone
and Creon over who owns the body of Polyneices and who can have access
to it, Heaney remembered the situation of Francis Hughes, his 25-year-­
old neighbour in Northern Ireland who died in prison in 1981 after being
on hunger strike (demanding political status as an IRA prisoner) for
69 days.13 His body was in the custody of the Royal Ulster Constabulary
but his family and friends wanted to pay their last respects and to bury it.
The battle over his body was emotionally heated, setting the hunger strik-
er’s family against the state, and reflected the division between the regula-
tions of the state authorities on the one hand and the personal needs of the
family to observe the traditional rites on the other. For this and other
reasons Heaney decided to emphasize the word ‘burial’ in changing the
title of Antigone to the Burial at Thebes.14
While the adaptation is loaded with postcolonial resonances, the imme-
diate justification for Heaney to write a new version of Antigone in 2004
was the policy of US President George W. Bush in his ‘war on terror’. In
defying international opinion by invading Iraq, and creating an extra-legal
system of detention without trial for prisoners from the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq, including a prison at Guantánamo that was beyond US jurisdic-
tion (see Butler 2004, p. 97), Bush appeared as a contemporary equivalent
20 S.E. WILMER

of Creon. Much of the aggressive rhetoric of George Bush is echoed in

Heaney’s rendition of Creon’s speeches which stress the need for unity
and loyalty to the polis:

Solidarity, friends,
Is what we need. The whole crew must close ranks.
The safety of our state depends upon it.
Our trust. Our friendships. Our security. (Heaney 2004, p. 10)

Speaking in iambic pentameter and emphasizing his goal ‘to honour

patriots in life and death,’ (Heaney 2004, p. 11) Creon establishes his
authority over the citizen chorus, declares the importance of civic over
family duty, and extols the value of strong leadership:

Worst is the man who has all the good advice

And then, because his nerve fails, fails to act
In accordance with it, as a leader should.
And equally to blame
Is anyone who puts the personal
Above the overall thing, puts friend
Or family first […]
For the patriot,
Personal loyalty always must give way
To patriotic duty. (Heaney 2004, p. 11)

By emphasising such words as ‘patriot’, ‘patriotic duty’, ‘patriots in life

and death’, as well as ‘safety’ and ‘security’, Creon’s phraseology calls to
mind the post-9/11 climate of fear, loyalty (to the government) and
vengefulness which was encouraged by the US president through the
adoption of the USA Patriot Act, the creation of the Department of
Homeland Security and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.15 Like Bush,
who boasted of the US military pursuit of the Taliban, ‘We’ll smoke ’em
out’ (CNN 2001a), Creon in Heaney’s version (2004, p. 3) says of poten-
tial saboteurs: ‘I’ll flush ’em out.’ And, virtually quoting Bush’s speech at
a news conference in 2001 where he declared to coalition partners: ‘You’re
either with us or against us in the fight against terror,’ (CNN 2001b)16
Creon warns:

Whoever isn’t for us

Is against us in this case. (Heaney 2004, p. 3)
 RECONTEXTUALIZATION AND ADAPTATION OF ANCIENT GREEK DRAMAS 21

Moreover, there is an underlying parallel between Creon’s treatment of

Polyneices and Bush’s denial of human rights in the interrogation and
imprisonment of anyone labelled as a ‘terrorist’. Creon decrees:

Never to grant traitors and subversives

Equal footing with loyal citizens. (Heaney 2004, p. 10)

And with regard to Polyneices:

He is forbidden
Any ceremonial whatsoever.
No keening, no interment, no observance
Of any of the rites. (Heaney 2004, p. 11)

The phrase ‘no observance of any of the rites’ in the performance of the
play echoed the denial of human rights and dignity to suspected terrorists.
The US military was torturing prisoners, denying them access to lawyers,
and justifying such treatment because of the exceptional conditions (state
of exception) engendered by terrorism. Slavoj Žižek (2002, p. 105) com-
mented at the time:

[T]he topic of torture has persisted in 2002: at the beginning of April, when
the Americans got hold of Abu Zubaydah, presumed to be the al-Qaeda sec-
ond-in-command, the question ‘Should he be tortured?’ was openly discussed
in the mass media. In a statement broadcast by NBC on 5 April, Donald
Rumsfeld himself claimed that his priority is American lives, not the human
rights of a high-ranking terrorist, and attacked journalists for displaying such
concern for Zubaydah’s well-being, thus openly clearing the way for torture.

The journalist Jonathan Alter (in Žižek 2002, p. 102), sympathizing with
the general trend away from human rights after 9/ll, argued in Newsweek:

We can’t legalize torture; it’s contrary to American values. But even as we

continue to speak out against human-rights abuses around the world, we
need to keep an open mind about certain measures to fight terrorism, like
court-sanctioned psychological interrogation. And we’ll have to think about
transferring some suspects to our less squeamish allies, even if that’s hypo-
critical. Nobody said this was going to be pretty.17

Like George Bush, who denied human rights and, more specifically, the
applicability of the Geneva Convention (relating to prisoners of war) to
Another random document with
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theory requires them to be, namely honest interpreters of the popular
will instead of crooked agents of sinister influence into which they will
otherwise degenerate. Taking the most moderate view of the benefits
to arise from such reforms, therefore, it would seem a clear duty of
all patriotic citizens and statesmen to work first for the publicity of
campaign contributions and afterwards for such other restrictions
upon their collection and use as experience may suggest.

FOOTNOTES:
[67] “Present Discontents,” Bohn ed. vol. i, p. 375.
[68] Cf. Jane Addams, “Democracy and Social Ethics,” ch. vii.
[69] Cf. “The Rise and Growth of American Politics,” p. 312.
[70] Cf. “The Rise and Growth of American Politics,” p. 323. He
adds that: “No other nation in the world is rich enough for the
political experimentation which the United States is carrying on;
but when the end crowns the work, its cost may be found to have
been small in comparison with the value of the recompense.”
[71] Nevada was the first state to enact legislation of this
character. (L. 1895, ch. 103; repealed, 1899, ch. 108.) In the
same year a Minnesota law (ch. 277) presented a very detailed
definition of legitimate expenses. The laws of Pennsylvania
(1906, ch. 17), and of New York (1906, ch. 503), are very
significant. Professor Merriam sums them up as follows: “Both
provide that no expenses shall be incurred except of the classes
authorised in the act. The New York list, which is rather more
liberal in this respect than that of Pennsylvania, includes rent of
halls and compensation of speakers, music, and fireworks,
advertisement and incidental expenses of meetings, posters,
lithographs, banners, and literary material, payments to agents to
supervise the preparation of campaign articles and
advertisements, and furnish information to newspapers; for
advertising, pictures, reading material, etc.; for rent of offices and
club rooms, compensation of clerks and agents; for attorneys at
law; for preparation of lists of voters; for necessary personal and
travelling expenses of candidates and committeemen; for
postage, express, telegraph, and telephone; for preparing
nominating petitions; for workers and watchers at the polls, and
food for the same; for transportation of the sick and infirm to the
polls.” (“N. Y. State Library Review of Legislation, 1906,” p. 160.)
Cf. also Virginia, L. 1903, ch. 98; South Dakota, L. 1907, ch. 146;
and California, L. 1907, ch. 350.
In 1907, New York took the further step of limiting the amount of
expenditure for a given purpose, ch. 398 of that year providing
that not more than three carriages in a city district, nor more than
six in other districts, should be used for the transportation of
voters. Acting on the same principle Massachusetts in 1908 (ch.
85), prohibited the employment by political committees of more
than six persons in a voting precinct or city ward. As the lavish
expenditure of campaign funds for service, rents, and
commodities may become nothing more than a veiled form of
vote buying, the significance of the action of New York and
Massachusetts is apparent. The English Act of 1883 contains
similar provisions.
The New Jersey law of 1906 (ch. 208) contains a long list of
prohibited expenditures, including payments for entertainment, for
fitting up club rooms for social or recreative purposes, or
providing uniforms for any organised club, and the payment for
insertion of articles in newspapers and magazines unless labelled
as paid articles.
[72] Cf. also the Oregon law proposed by initiative petition and
adopted June 1, 1908.
[73] New York now requires full reports from committees also
(ch. 502, L. 1906).
[74] Iowa, L. 1907, ch. 50, followed New York’s example.
[75] “Republican Campaign Text Book,” 1908, p. 25. In his
message at the beginning of the second (i. e., the first regular)
session of the Sixty-first Congress on December 7, 1909,
President Taft returns to the subject as follows:
“I urgently recommend to Congress that a law be passed
requiring that candidates in elections of Members of the House of
Representatives, and committees in charge of their candidacy
and campaign, file in a proper office of the United States
Government a statement of the contributions received and of the
expenditures incurred in the campaign for such elections, and that
similar legislation be enacted in respect to all other elections
which are constitutionally within the control of Congress.”
 The passage in the foregoing, italicised by the writer, is
noteworthy in that it indicates a step in advance by the president.
His speech of acceptance referred to contributions only, whereas
the message of December 7, 1909, demands publicity of
expenditures as well as of party income.
[76] New York Tribune, November 24, 1908, p. 3. The
Cincinnati Enquirer of November 22, 1908, said that
approximately 20,000 persons contributed to the Republican fund.
Possibly the discrepancy is due to the inclusion in the latter figure
of contributors to the finance committees of the Republican
National Committee in the several states, which as noted above
collected $620,150.
[77] Cincinnati Commercial-Tribune, November 23, 1908.
According to the New York Tribune of November 24, 1908, p. 3, in
which is given a list of contributors to the Republican fund in sums
of $500 and upward the larger contributors to the Republican fund
were as follows: C. P. Taft, $110,000; Union League Club, New
York, $34,377, Larz Anderson and G. A. Garrotson, each
$25,000; Union League Club, Philadelphia, $22,500; Andrew
Carnegie and J. P. Morgan each $20,000. In addition to these
there were fifteen contributors of sums of between $6000 and
$15,000 inclusive; twenty-four contributors of $5000 each; thirty-
four of sums between $2500 and $4000 inclusive; twenty of
$2000 each; twenty-eight of sums between $1250 and $1500
inclusive; one hundred and nineteen contributors of $1000 each;
ten of between $750 and $900 inclusive; and two hundred and
fifty contributors of $500 each.
The Democrats made a preliminary report of contributions on
October 15, and daily reports thereafter until the election. As the
newspapers did not state clearly whether the later figures
regarding contributions were inclusive or additional it is difficult to
summarise the larger contributions accurately. According to the
New York Times of October 14, Tammany Hall sent a check for
$10,000 to the Democratic National Committee. The general
report issued October 15, showed the following contributors in
excess of $2000: C. J. Hughes, $5000; W. J. Bryan, Profits of the
Commoner, $4046; Nathan Straus, $2500; National Democratic
Club, $2500; Norman E. Mack, $2000; Sen. W. A. Clark, $2000;
George W. Harris, $2000. Some of the foregoing were reported
as making contributions after October 15, and if other
contributions reported at various times were not repetitions the list
of contributors of $2000 and over would be somewhat increased.
On October 29, the New York Times reported a gift of $10,000
from Herman Ridder, Treasurer of the Democratic Committee,
and gifts of $9000 each from his three sons, Victor, Bernard, and
Joseph. A contribution of $3000 from E. F. Goltra was also
reported on this date. In addition to the foregoing, five
contributions of between $1000 and $1500, and thirty-three of a
thousand dollars each were reported. According to the Cincinnati
Commercial-Tribune of October 16, Democratic newspapers
collected almost $100,000 out of the $248,000 obtained up to that
date. The New York Times of October 31, noted that one paper,
The New Orleans States, had collected a total of $22,000, said to
be the record contribution for any one newspaper.
[78] “The Dollars Behind the Ballots,” World To-day, vol. xv
(1908), p. 946.
[79] Cf. p. 145, supra.
[80] As final corrections were being made upon these pages
the continental press announces the passage of a publicity
measure by Congress. Unfortunately the writer is unable to
secure details upon which to base a judgment of the new law.
That publicity before election was not provided for is, in his
opinion, to be regretted. On the other hand the enactment as
federal law of a measure of this character represents a decided
victory for a principle capable of great expansion. In this
connection the able and persistent propagandist work of the
National Publicity Law Association under the presidency of Mr.
Perry Belmont deserves the warmest commendation. Noteworthy
also is the fact that the Association includes in its membership
many of the most distinguished leaders of both political parties.—
Paris, July 1, 1910.
[81] According to the English Corrupt and Illegal Practice
Prevention Act of 1883, bribery as the unauthorised act of an
agent renders the election invalid and disqualifies the candidate
from representing the constituency in which the offence was
committed for seven years. While the penalty may seem drastic it
has the good effect of compelling candidates to scrutinise
expenditures in their behalf with a degree of anxious care seldom
duplicated on this side of the Atlantic.
[82] Missouri, L. 1907, p. 261. This law was declared
unconstitutional in 1908, however, on the ground that it impaired
liberty of press and speech. Ex parte Harrison, 110 S. W. 709.
 [83] A similar provision was included in the Massachusetts law
of 1892.
[84] A Michigan law which went into effect in 1892 (Repealed,
ch. 61, 1901) provided that all expenditures on behalf of
candidates, with few exceptions, should be made through the
party committees.
[85] Following the four states which took action in 1897,
Kentucky forbade corporate contributions in 1900. In 1905,
Minnesota (ch. 291) made it a felony for an officer of a business
corporation to vote money to a campaign fund. Wisconsin in the
same year (ch. 492) made it a felony for a corporation to
contribute to political parties for the purpose of influencing
legislation or promoting or defeating the candidacy of persons for
public office. New York in 1906, (ch. 239) prohibited political
contributions by corporations and made violation of the act a
misdemeanor. Alabama, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, and
Texas were the five states which forbade corporate contributions
in 1907, and the following eleven were reported as specifically
prohibiting contributions from life insurance companies in that
year: Delaware, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New
Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota,
Tennessee, and West Virginia. In 1908, Ohio, Georgia,
Massachusetts, and Mississippi also forbade corporate
contributions. Altogether to the end of 1908, seventeen states had
forbidden corporate contributions in general, and eleven had
specifically forbidden contributions from life insurance companies.
[86] Massachusetts, L. 1908, ch. 85.
[87] Ohio, L. 1896, p. 123; repealed, L. 1902, p. 77.
[88] Nebraska in L. 1899, ch. 29, fixed the same maxima and
minima as the Garfield Act. The sliding scale principle was
employed in the English Act of 1883.
[89] California, L., 1893, ch. 2; Missouri, L. 1893, p. 157;
Montana, Penal Code, 1895, sec. 80 ff.; Minnesota, L. 1895, ch.
277; and New York, L. 1907, ch. 584.
[90] New York, L. 1895, 155; Connecticut, L. 1895, 338.
[91] California, L. 1907, ch. 350.
[92] New York, L. 1906, ch. 503.
[93] Cf. p. 177, supra.
 [94] See p. 250, supra.
[95] Cf. p. 246, supra.
[96] Wisconsin, L. 1897, 358.
[97] Cf. President Arthur T. Hadley’s discussion of “The
Constitutional Position of Property in America” in the Independent
of April 16, 1908.
[98] Cf. Professor C. Edward Merriam’s “Primary Elections.”
[99] Laws of 1896, p. 123. The repeal was due to minor defects
in the law which could easily have been corrected by amendment.
[100] Laws of 1906, ch. 17.
[101] Nebraska, L. 1901, 30; Virginia L. 1903, ch. 98; Georgia,
L. 1908, 63.
[102] An able argument on this point is presented by Mr. Perry
Belmont in his “Publicity of Election Expenditures,” North
American Review, vol. clxxx (1905), p. 166. For many of the most
important facts cited in the preceding pages of this study the
writer is indebted to Mr. Belmont’s valuable article.
[103] Cf. the Association’s searching “Report of Examination of
Election Expense Statements, 1908;” also its leaflet on “Future
Plans to Prevent Corrupt Practices.”
CORRUPTION AND NOTORIETY: THE
MEASURE OF OUR OFFENDING
 VII
CORRUPTION AND NOTORIETY: THE MEASURE OF OUR

OFFENDING

Charges of corruption make up a large and important part of the

stock in trade of the ordinary American journalist, politician, and
reformer. One unfortunate result of this condition of affairs is that,
taking us at our word, Europe is forming a very low estimate of the
honesty of governmental and business practices on this side of the
Atlantic. Even among ourselves corruption is coming to be thought of
as an indefinite percentage of evil corroding the general service of
the state, and this percentage is assumed to be much larger in the
United States than abroad. Similar comparisons are drawn between
the principal local and state governments of the country. One popular
writer owes no small part of his vogue to the crisp and supposedly
accurate tags which he has affixed to several of our municipalities
and states, e.g., “corrupt and contented,” “half free and fighting on,”
“a city ashamed,” “bad and glad of it,” “a traitor state,” “a state for
sale,” and so on. Between actual corruption, however, and the
notoriety attached to it no definite and known ratio can be said to
exist. Much as it is to be regretted quantitative measures of this
political and social evil are at present quite impossible. Many
difficulties stand in the way even of approximations sufficiently exact
for comparisons of any value. It may perhaps be as well worth while
to consider the nature of these difficulties as to indulge in
denunciation regardless of them.
In the first place a thoroughgoing policy of concealment and
silence would seem absolutely essential on the part of those who
engage in corrupt practices. Our most astute leaders and
manipulators realise this fact. All observers agree, however, that
among the initiated, which usually means a pretty large circle,
corrupt transactions are discussed with comparative freedom. It is a
matter of no great difficulty for an ordinarily capable reporter to learn
in a general way what has been done by the boss or gang in certain
instances, although this, of course, is sufficiently far from being legal
evidence. And it is notorious that our politicians of the baser sort
often indulge their cronies with boasting accounts of their own
achievements in grafting. No one has commented upon this fact with
greater vigour than Professor H. J. Ford of Princeton in his admirable
review of Mr. Steffens’ Shame of the Cities.
“The facts with which Mr. Steffens deals,” writes Professor Ford,
“are superficial symptoms. Hardly any disguise of them is attempted in
the ordinary talk of local politicians. One of the first things which
practical experience teaches is that the political ideals which receive
literary expression have a closely limited range. One soon reaches
strata of population in which they disappear, and the relation of boss
and client appears to be proper and natural. The connection between
grafting politicians and their adherents is such that ability to levy
blackmail inspires the same sort of respect and admiration which Rob
Roy’s followers felt for him in the times that provided a career for his
particular talents. And as in Rob Roy’s day, intimate knowledge finds
in the type some hardy virtues. For one thing, politicians of this type
do not indulge in cant. They are no more shamefaced in talking about
their grafting exploits to an appreciative audience than a mediæval
baron would have been in discussing the produce of his feudal fees
and imposts. Mr. Steffens has really done no more than to put
together material lying about loose upon the surface of municipal
politics and give it effective presentation. The general truth of his
statement of the case is indisputable.”[104]
Possibly, however, Professor Ford underestimates the penetrating
force of “political ideals which receive literary expression.” If by this
phrase he means only the highest conclusions of philosophy clothed
in the noblest language, it is apparent that a very small circle will be
reached at first, although in time these ideals also are certain to be
widely diffused by the schools, by journalism and by the learned
professions. If, on the other hand, “literary expression” is understood
to include the news and editorial columns and the cartoons of the
daily newspaper, a great and constantly increasing body of readers
are becoming amenable to ideals higher than those bred by the
personal relation of “boss and client.” Tweed’s sensitiveness to the
terribly cutting cartoons of Thomas Nast shows this process in the
course of development. In spite of the fact, of which the Tammany
chieftain had boasted, that most of his constituents could not read,
he was nevertheless forced to exclaim:—“If those picture papers
would only leave me alone I wouldn’t care for all the rest. The people
get used to seeing me in stripes, and by and by grow to think I ought
to be in prison.”[105] Even that portion of our foreign population which
differs most widely in language and customs from the native
American stock is being brought with amazing swiftness under the
influence of the daily papers published in English.[106] That influence
may not be all that we would like it, but at any rate it is much more
broadening than the ethics of the clan.
In addition to the perverted class ideas current in the lower political
ranks there are other causes of the astounding garrulity which
prevails regarding corrupt practices. One of these is the exaggerated
vanity which all penologists note as a common trait of criminal
character. The most adequate explanation, however, is to be found
in the fact that so many of the offenders of this sort are allowed to
escape the penalties of the law. If corruption even in its grosser
forms were as certain of punishment as burglary or forgery, its still
unterrified votaries would speedily learn to keep their mouths shut.
One almost amusing consequence of the large degree of immunity
they enjoy at present is the maudlin sympathy expressed by
confrères when an occasional unlucky rascal is fairly caught in the
net of the law. Well they know, these friends of his, that he is no
more guilty than a score of others who go scot free. Often the
untoward event is made the subject of denunciations on the flagrant
injustice involved, and if the gang is particularly impudent its next
accession to power is pretty apt to be marked by the complete
rehabilitation of the “martyrs” who suffered during the reform
uprising.
As a result of the reckless and often exaggerated gabble of the
grafters, sensational newspapers and magazines find it an easy
matter to keep their columns filled continually with highly spiced
political exposures. In all probability comparatively few out of the
total of corrupt transactions that actually take place are thus made
public, but the prominence given these few may easily lead to
overestimates of the extent of this evil in our political life.
Undoubtedly, also, our practical political leaders are sometimes
accused of offences in which they had no part. Inefficiency, as we
have seen, is very common and very similar in appearance to
corruption. No great reportorial or editorial skill is required to dress it
in the garb of the latter. The constant reiteration of stories of this kind
creates as well as meets a popular demand. Ordinarily a saving
sense of the exaggeration and partisanship indulged in by a section
of the press leads readers to make the necessary discount in
forming their opinions of the published accounts of corruption. At
times, however, the popular craving for pungent stories of corruption
amounts to a positive mania. Such was the case in 1905, 1906, and
1907, as any comparison of the tables of contents of certain
magazines and papers of that period with previous years will
abundantly show. On the other hand there can be no doubt that a
considerable part of this literature of exposure and denunciation was
substantially accurate, and that its publication was a service of high
merit. That it was also profitable is no reproach: society is the gainer
when instead of ostracism and punishment it provides rewards and
honours for those who attack real public abuses. In not a few cases
where corruption was thus charged by journalists subsequent
investigations before commissions and courts left no doubt of the
existence of vicious practices, and led to reforms of a most
beneficent character.
Extremely deplorable as must be the effect of false accusations
inspired by selfish motives, a policy of the widest publicity offers
great advantages over one of suppression and silence. Better fifty
exposures, ten or even twenty of which are misleading, than blind
concealment of official misdoing. Disproof of false charges is
comparatively easy and when effectively made redounds to the
prestige of the official or individual who has been unjustly assailed.
As for those newspapers and periodicals which flagrantly abuse their
privilege, it is seldom that they altogether escape penalties in the
form of loss of influence if not of circulation. If penalties of these
kinds can be made effective press censorship and lese majeste
laws, such as exist in autocratic governments, need never be
resorted to in America. From this point of view the horror frequently
expressed by continental publicists at the corruption existing in the
United States appears rather equivocal. Bad as some of our political
conditions may be, we at least deserve credit for our willingness,
nay, our determination, to hear the worst about ourselves. Certainly
there would seem to be greater hope of improvement under our
policy than in a country whose chief national hero used the
enormous income from the sequestered estates of the House of
Hanover to fill the news and editorial columns of the “reptile” press
with lying articles favourable to his policies, and in which only
recently the facts concerning the Camarilla surrounding the Emperor
were so cautiously and partially brought to light. And it is well known
that in Russia the censorship was deliberately used by provincial
bureaucrats to conceal their misdeeds from the knowledge of the
Czar.
As between countries which muzzle the press and those which
allow liberty it is inevitable, then, that the governments of the latter
will be charged far more openly and frequently with corruption.
Citizens who are shocked by the accusations thus trumpeted forth
may be pardoned some apprehensions for the continued stability
and success of their institutions. The sentiment does them more
credit than callous disregard or brazen Chauvinism, and is altogether
more likely to be productive of good works in the future. But it may
easily be carried to an extreme. National shamefacedness is not a
virtue. In forming a judgment of the extent of contemporary
corruption the garrulity of politicians, the sensationalism of the press,
the popular demand for highly spiced accounts of official sinning
should all be taken into account. A cynical representative of yellow
journalism, replying to the criticism that his paper indulged too much
in lengthy and lurid accounts of crime and immorality, remarked
rather sententiously that “sin is news.” The statement is only partially
true. Most sins are too common and too petty to have any news
value. Only those offences that to current estimation seem large and
dangerous are given prominence and headlines. If Turkey and China
enjoyed the blessings of a free press it is hardly probable that the
papers of those countries would give much space to what, according
to Western standards, would be frankly considered corrupt and
extortionate practices on the part of their pashas and mandarins.
Such practices would be so common, so universally known, and so
little in conflict with contemporary Turkish and Chinese political
morals that they would excite little interest and comment. If then, as
in our own papers, accounts of atrocious crimes and accusations of
corrupt practices are given the same large measure of prominence it
means simply that both kinds of offences are considered to possess
a high degree of news value. Puritans may deplore the popular taste
which finds interest in such reports, but we cannot deny the
existence of that interest. Primarily it exists not because sin as such
is news but because offences which are considered large and
dangerous appeal powerfully to the popular mind.
To the normal reader, of course, the fascination of such accounts
is the fascination of repulsion, not of attraction. In attempting to
explain the pornographic note in modern French literature, Professor
Barrett Wendell makes a most ingenious suggestion that is not
without its application to the present argument.[107] With the
exception of a class forming a small part of the whole population,
French family life is conspicuously pure. Why, then, asks Professor
Wendell, should fathers and mothers who themselves practise every
conjugal virtue delight in novels and dramas that dissect all the
prurient phases of divorce, adultery, and sexual laxity? Simply
because such topics take them out of themselves by presenting
situations quite foreign to their experience and hence strikingly
interesting. In some degree the same answer applies to American
public interest in corrupt practices. The great mass of business and
professional men, and of politicians as well, who sincerely attempt to
live up to the best standards of their vocations nevertheless read and
hear with avidity spicy accounts of the malpractices of their
disreputable colleagues. Nor can this interest on their part be
denounced as morbid so long as it leads not to palliation and
imitation but to reprobation and efforts for the wiping out of abuses.
Would the situation be really improved if instead of the daily grists
presented to us by the newspapers we should read nothing but
accounts of the straightforward methods which are employed in the
great bulk of political, business, and professional transactions? The
habit might be exemplary but it would certainly be supremely dull.
While it is not true that all sin is news there would seem to be
nothing to regret in the fact that neither are all virtues. Of the two the
former undoubtedly has the greater news value. But the reason for
this is that relative to the sum total of everyday transactions the more
heinous offences against morals and law are to a high degree
unusual. Virtue and ability, on the other hand, are so commonplace
that it requires a most exceptional display of either to secure public
notice. Considerable vogue has been enjoyed recently by the term
“smokeless sin,” as applied to certain forms of social evil-doing
which although large and dangerous are also so subtle and
complicated that responsibility for them can easily be avoided.[108]
Students of sin would do well to remember, however, that now as
always virtue as a whole possesses the quality of smokelessness to
a much more eminent degree than vice.
Admitting that political corruption exists among us to a disquieting
extent the point is frequently made that the vigour with which it has
recently been exposed and attacked is in itself evidence of moral
health and harbinger of ultimate victory over the evil. Such exposure
and attacks, it is said, signify the development of higher ideals
measured by which practices formerly tolerated are now condemned
by public opinion and will later be condemned by law. As to the
emergence of higher ideals there can be no doubt, and so far we
have just ground for encouragement. Reform sentiment as a whole,
however, can scarcely be accepted at its full face value. A
considerable part of the denunciation which accompanies it is as
much exaggerated as the corresponding campaign “literature” and
“oratory” of the practical politician. Thus the volume of clamour is
augmented and the difficulty of correctly estimating honesty in public
life increased. There are always those who deliberately attach
themselves to reform movements solely because they foresee
victory at the polls with office and emoluments and other less
legitimate opportunities for themselves. In other words while
ostensibly fighting corruption the motives of such persons are at
bottom corrupt from the start. Bandit Mendoza of the Sierras, that
eminent socialist of Shaw’s creation, was not entirely wrong in
maintaining that “a movement which is confined to philosophers and
honest men can never exercise any real political influence: there are
too few of them. Until a movement shows itself capable of spreading
among brigands, it can never hope for a political majority.” In some
American cities charges have even been made that corporate
interests which did not enjoy the favour of the gang or boss have
contributed largely to “anti-graft” campaigns, their real purpose being
to place themselves in a position to claim the favour of the “honest”
administration elected by their efforts. Knowledge of corrupt
transactions, discretely hinted at in the press, has been used in other
instances as a sort of political blackmail to club the gang or boss into
the granting of privileges to applicants who had hitherto been denied.
The mere volume of clamour developed by reform movements
against corrupt practices is, therefore, no certain index of higher
moral standards. There is even danger that we may too
complacently accept mere denunciation for real achievement. Nor
can the work be deemed finished when popular uproar has secured
new legislation, for laws, notoriously, do not execute themselves.
Discouragement then too easily overtakes the rank and file of the
anti-corrupt element; hence, in part, the spasmodic character of
many reform movements. When every necessary deduction has
been made, however, the fundamental strength and continued
progress of the cause of honesty in politics is beyond question. Even
the selfish interests that attach themselves to it prove this contention.
It is true they bring no enthusiasm for higher standards as such, and
also that the results of alliances of this character are often
disheartening. Nevertheless the mere fact that such alliances are
entered into by practical politicians is pretty strong testimony, coming
as it does from men who are very little affected by considerations of
sentiment, to the power of the sincere reform element which is
pursuing no ulterior ends. In all cases of this sort the selfish politician
is seeking to strike with the strength of others, and this strength must
be reckoned with as a real factor, no matter what uses designing
men endeavour to make of it. Here as elsewhere the counterfeit
bears witness to the value of the genuine.
Whatever may be the extent of corruption in the United States it is
under fire all along the line. Moreover we regard and attack as
abuses practices which in other countries are considered free from
reproach or even as pillars of the state. Comparisons to our
disadvantage on the score of corruption are most frequently made
with England and Germany. In England, however, the privileges of
peerage, gentry, clergy, and the landholding class generally are
enormous.[109] Land is assessed at a fraction of its real value, local
rates are thrown upon the tenant, railroads seeking charters and
cities seeking legislation to wipe out disease-breeding slums or to
take over badly managed docks find themselves mulcted by special
acts exacting excessive prices for the property taken, and the
interests responsible for all these conditions sit enthroned in an
omnipotent parliament. Landlordism has progressed to a
considerable degree in the United States, to be sure, and we
possess a more than plentiful supply of slum landlords. Property
rights in realty are abundantly protected among us, but our
landowners are very far from enjoying the class privileges or the
social standing accorded them in England. Moreover when abuses
arise in connection with their management, public opinion does not
hesitate to express itself unmistakably, nor is corrective legislation
difficult to procure. In Germany, which like England is frequently
extolled for its high political morality, autocracy, aristocracy,
Junkertum, and the swaggering military class are sacrosanct.
Landtag and city councils in Prussia are elected under a three-class
voting system which fills these bodies with agents of the landed and
plutocratic interests and deprives the great mass of the people of
adequate representation. Against these and kindred abuses has
risen the menace of social-democracy. The prospects for peaceful
reform in the near future are not altogether bright. Autocratic,
aristocratic, and plutocratic rule is seated firmly in the saddle, and is
not inclined to listen to proposals that it shall reduce its own powers.
Special privileges exist in the United States, it is true, but they are
always regarded as questionable, they must continually justify
themselves to a majority of the whole people, they can never feel
themselves secure in public opinion even if for the time being they
have the support of law. “Grafting,” said Governor Folk of Missouri,
“may or may not be unlawful. It is either a special privilege exercised
contrary to law or one that the law itself may give. Special privileges
are grafts and should be hateful to all good citizens.”[110] The
statement is an unguarded one, but it is thoroughly typical of a deep-
seated American tendency to suspect corruption in every special
privilege, whether it be legal or illegal, whether it be condemned by a
sweeping consensus of moral opinion or only by some reforming
voice crying in the wilderness.
It is no part of this argument to assert that the rights and
immunities enjoyed by the English aristocracy, for example, are
corrupt. Under the definition earlier proposed this is clearly not the
case. On the contrary these privileges have as yet the support of
law, tradition, custom, public opinion, and public deference. A radical
democrat might say that all this simply proves the blind ignorance of
the great mass of Englishmen and the fatal ease with which they can
be exploited by a horde of social parasites. From an unprejudiced
point of view, however, we must concede the right of a people to
govern itself according to its own lights. The English may be
committing a monstrous political blunder in tolerating their
aristocracy, but if they decide to do so that is their own concern, and
the privilege so established is, both in morals and in law, beyond the
accusation of corruption. Exactly the same defence may be made for
the Prussian Junkertum and the German military class, or, for that
matter, for the caste system of India. The development of new
standards of public opinion, morals, and politics, in these countries
may at some time bring their privileged classes under effective
criticism; the conviction that they are socially harmful may gain
ground; and out of this conviction may come reform movements
designed to secure their abolition. Until that time, however, while we
may perceive clearly enough the political ills entailed upon our
neighbours by special privilege, we cannot denounce them as
corrupt because they tolerate it.
It may even be conceded that in some cases the glorification of a
class is in the best interests of the state as a whole. Feudal
aristocracy was certainly functional and efficient, whatever one may
think of its modern descendants. Considering Germany’s powerful
neighbours and her extended frontier there is much to be said even
for the privileges at present granted to her military class, however
odious they may appear to the citizen of a non-militant country. One
need not go far afield in search of illustrations of this sort. Under our
tariff system advantages accrue particularly to manufacturers that
are not entirely dissimilar to the special privileges referred to above.
Protection was established, however, on the ground that while
manufacturers might benefit primarily by duties on imports, the
resulting advantages would be widely diffused, and the interests of
the country as a whole advanced by this policy. It is possible that the
majority was mistaken in so thinking, just as the English may be
mistaken in thinking that the maintenance of an aristocracy is to their
national advantage. Deeply as our protective system is entrenched,
however, it has no such support as aristocracy in England, as
militancy in Germany. It has continuously been criticised by very
large minorities, and the only real basis of defence it possesses is
the conviction of the majority that it is conducive to the welfare of the
country as a whole. If it once loses this support its ultimate fall is
assured. Other forms of privilege existing among us,—railroad
interests, franchise interests, interests seeking land, timber, and
mineral grants, or subsidies, and corporations generally,—are on the
defensive to an even greater degree than the protective system.
The argument so far as it relates to special privileges may now be
summed up as follows: Special privileges are not necessarily
corrupt; they may be in the public interest and recognised as such.
They exist in the United States, but are much more common in
England and Germany. We, however, have chosen to regard all of
them with suspicion and to attack many of them vigorously, charging
them not only with corruption but with every other political crime in
the calendar. Abroad they enjoy greater security and respectability.
Even when they are assailed by English and continental publicists
more deferential methods of attack are employed than we are used
to in America. Rude words such as “graft” are avoided.[111] Hence in
part the greater appearance of corruption which we present to
Europe, and which we seem to confirm by the criminations and
recriminations which issue from our own mouths. Mr. Frederic C.
Howe is therefore right in maintaining the probability that “it is not so
much in the badness, as in our knowledge of the badness, that
America differs from the rest of the world.” Without underestimating
the enormous power of the forms of special privilege which exist
among us, and the difficulty of restraining and regulating them,[112]
European nations may nevertheless find it a far more trying task to
adjust the claims of their own widespread and deeply rooted forms of
privilege when they come into conflict with the rising tide of
democratic and socialistic sentiment. So far as privilege in autocratic,
aristocratic, and clerical forms, is concerned we have every reason
to be grateful that the fathers of the Republic long ago made away
with it. They left the awful heritage of slavery, but privilege resting
upon that basis has also been wiped out. We ourselves must face
the power of the political machine and massed wealth, and we are
facing it. Momentous as is the issue, we have, at least, the
satisfaction of being able to rejoice, in the trenchant and essentially
true words of Mr. William Allen White, that the United States is “a
country where you can buy men only with money.”[113]
In comparing the political morality of Europe and America
reference must finally be made, even at the risk of repetition, to the
greater political trust imposed in the mass of our people. As regards
the number participating suffrage is not materially different in the
United States from the systems of the leading European nations.
The tendency abroad, however, is to limit the direct popular vote to
legislative offices only and to the smallest possible number of these.
It is undeniable that we have gone too far in the opposite direction.
We crowd not only legislative but also many judicial and
administrative offices on our “blanket” ballots, and as a result the
total number of places submitted to the popular vote passes all
bounds. Instead of realising greater democracy by this method we
enable the machine to take advantage of the confusion which the
elector feels when confronted by so many places and candidates,
and his consequent inclination to vote “straight.”[114] Apart from this
point, however, it is extremely important to note that the power of the
vote to confer place is much greater in the United States than
abroad, and consequently, if it is to be corruptly purchased or
misused, its value is higher. To put the matter in another way, the
trust imposed by the Republic in the voter is greater. The number of
offices to which the ordinary citizen is eligible by ballot without regard
to class standing or desirable preparation, the greater importance of
state and local government, and the placing of the latter under
popular control,—all contribute to increase the burden of
responsibility which is imposed upon the great mass. We must admit
that the trust thus created is often violated, but on the other hand we
deserve such credit as may arise from the fact that we have
deliberately chosen to believe in the virtue of the whole people and
have established a system which puts that virtue to a supreme test.
European nations which take the “holier than thou” attitude with
reference to our corruption might be forced to abandon their
pretensions if they were to lodge as much power in their electorates
as we do in ours. Given two communities, one “dry” and the other
“wet,” the mere fact that there was more drunkenness in the latter
would not prove a less degree of moral control of appetite on the part
of its inhabitants. One would have to take into account that the
citizens of the “wet” community could satisfy their thirst openly and
frequently, whereas some of the “drys” must be sober at times simply
because they cannot get liquor. On the other hand, those citizens of
the “wet” community who abstain must do so of their own volition
and in the face of constant temptation. Similarly it may be said of the
political vice existing in the United States that its magnitude is in part
due to the fact that, loving democracy “not wisely but too well,” we
have distributed powers and responsibilities broadcast with the
consequence that they have fallen partly into unworthy hands. And
of such political virtue as we possess at least we may assert that it is
not the anemic innocence which has never known the approach of
temptation.
It would appear from the foregoing that the various factors which
must be taken into account in attempting to determine the extent of
existing corruption are extremely conflicting and uncertain. As
between country and country, city and city, comparisons are certain
to be odious and likely to be misleading. Each has problems
sufficiently pressing and extended to occupy its reform energies to
better advantage. We in the United States may not be so wicked as
our neighbours believe, but our work is cut out for us, and it is work
that will require the greatest intelligence and the greatest virtue that
the republic possesses. Hasty conclusions regarding the outcome,