THE LOST VIRTUES OF DUTY AND HONOR:

The Empire Strikes Back: Victorian virtues, Hollywood vices. (Jonathan Foreman, 10/14/2002, Weekly Standard)

Of course, the Victorians were much more complicated and interesting people than they are given credit for being. And though capable of great self-deception especially on matters of race, they often had an accurate sense of their own qualities and limitations, especially those that seem so alien today. They prized self-command because they knew the extraordinary things it made possible.

In 1852, a British troopship, the paddlewheeled Birkenhead, hit a rock off Capetown. There wasn't time to evacuate everyone onto the lifeboats. So as the women and children were lowered to safety, the troops and their officers stood, mustered on the deck. Not a single man broke ranks. And they were still standing as the ship broke and sank.

As Kipling wrote, "To stand and be still / To the Birkenhead drill / Is a damn' tough bullet to chew."

What made such deeds possible was the combination of a sense of duty and a rigid social hierarchy (at least by American standards). What the Victorians had and we can hardly imagine are the resulting pressures of society. They lived in a world in which mere physical cowardice, let alone exposure as a liar or fraudster, could earn a man permanent expulsion from desirable social circles.

It is a sad irony of history that the Victorian "Romanitas"--the sense of duty and hierarchy, the discipline and paternalism that formed the backbone of the British military culture--ensured the doctrinal rigidity that cost so many British lives in both world wars. Nonetheless, it is a mistake to look at the Victorian men fictionalized in "The Four Feathers" through the Edwardian lens of Bloomsbury and Lytton Strachey's mockery.

High Victorian culture could be rigid in its obsession with self-control and even cruel. But its optimism, discipline, and sense of duty made it very good at certain things. And their own pre-industrial code of a gentleman's honor gave Victorians an advantage when it came to dealing with other honor cultures--honor cultures similar to those that inform Osama bin Laden and other Arab enemies of the West. If America is to take up an imperial role in the world today, we have only the Victorian British from whom to learn how to do it.

There are, of course, many things to prefer about our society as opposed to Victorian, particularly if you aren't a straight, white, male. But the loss of self-control, duty, honor, and shame as social virtues has served no good purpose. Posted by Orrin Judd at October 13, 2002 5:11 PM