G.K.'s Weekly, September 29, 1928
I began this article sitting at a small table in a small country inn in conditions where many other and better things have begun. There was (I am sorry to say) nothing to eat on the table. There was (despite the sneer that instantly wreathes the refined features of the reader) nothing to drink on the table. The only relic of hospitality that remained was a bottle of salad-dressing; unsuited for purposes of festive carousing, and hardly in isolation fitted to be the food of man. Nevertheless, having fortunately nothing to do but stare at it, I continued to stare at it. And there is a belief deeply embedded in my being, older than all the conclusions to which I have come in politics or even in religion; the belief that everything is interesting, if a man is not too proud to be interested.And when I had stared at the salad-dressing, vaguely wondering whether it meant anything, it suddenly dawned on me that it meant everything—or at least everything that I am concerned to combat for in this place. By which I do not mean that salad-dressing should be substituted for beer in the scientific investigations at
The Devereux, or that the poets writing in this paper should be crowned with salad instead of laurel; or that a bottle of this condiment should form the long-sought emblem of the League; but rather the opposite, that it is the emblem of all that is to be resisted by the League. Nor do I urge my followers to go about smashing bottles of salad-dressing as Mrs. Nation smashed bottles of whisky; or pouring this liquid down the drain, as some profligate Puritan did with a legacy of champagne. All the good that is to be got out of the liquid can be obtained by sitting still and staring at it; and I continued to do so.That salad is the symbol of Distributism will instantly leap to every well-regulated mind; as it has only just leapt to mine. This is superficially and socially true, as a fact of history; since peasants have dealt much in salads. Salads are luxuries; but they are small luxuries, they are luxuries of the relatively poor. They not only spring out of the ground, but they can largely be grown in the garden. But the true significance of the symbol will not be found until we pass from the great topic of salads to the yet graver and even more awful topic of salad-dressing. Now, “making a salad” was one of those far-off and almost forgotten things which, in the bad and barbarous old days of our fathers (or grandfathers), a man was actually capable of doing for himself. And making a salad did not only mean cutting lettuce or cucumbers in his own kitchen garden; it also meant mixing mustard and oil and vinegar according to his own taste. To that extent a man really made a salad as he made a sketch or made a song. He was an artist: first, because the success depended upon proportion; and second, because the proportion depended upon choice. One man could make a salad one way and one man another. Men differed in the excellence of the salads they made; but they also differed about which salads were excellent. Such was the weakness of Fallen Man that many were found to prefer their own salads; but anyhow they were their own salads. And when we have seen that, we have seen the horrid significance of the bottle of salad-dressing. By the new system, salads will be like convicts or American ladies. They will be all dressed alike.It is worth noting, incidentally, that the original ingredients of the salad were of the same savour as the tradition and the soil. The man sitting under his own vine and olive did, at least in theory, own the means of production of his own vinegar and oil. But even if the vine and olive are not conspicuous as parts of our own private property, they are very conspicuous as parts of our ancient heritage and history. The very name of vinegar, the very name of olive oil, come out of ancient languages and a very ancient culture, both material and mental. The mustard-seed can remind us both of the Gospel and of the
Midsummer Night's Dream. My reflections might have been much more varied and imaginative if, seated in that old English hostelry, I had been looking not at a bottle but at a cruet-stand.But the point is that, precisely because the materials were old and simple, each individual combination of them could be new and subtle. The commercial combination of them could never be anything better than new, and would very soon be stale; and I confess that the bottle standing on the table already looked very stale. Staleness was in the moral idea as well as in the material instance; as staleness is in all the new things that now boast of their newness. For this thing had not been made by somebody for somebody; it had been made by nobody for everybody. I am not here debating how much men can do for themselves; of how far a sane social cooperation may sometimes involve such uniformity. Here, anyhow, is a particular thing that a man can do for himself; that a man did do for himself. And the strange but steady trend of our time is shown in the abandonment of the art without any special notice or regret; it is silently announced only in the appearance of the bottle on the table. Some will be content that the stuff is good enough to be swallowed; others that it is advertised enough to be sold. But the glory gained by the firm that manufacture it differs from the glory gained by the man who makes it. It is no longer a medium through which a private man can express his private taste. I know all the disadvantages and discords that are sometimes the result of any freedom or creative selection. I know the wild vistas that are sometimes revealed in the statement that “Uncle Humphrey thinks he can make a salad.” But I prefer them to that melancholy and endless vista, which only points towards an Uncle Humphrey who knows that he can make nothing.Of many other things is salad an allegory. I foresee that it will be necessary to write a large and important book on Salad. But of one thing I may speak, since this again is not unconnected with the ethic defended here. Salad is a symbol of civilization; because salad is a balance. All the modern mistake about progress consists in the idea that it is an improvement to have indefinite increase in some definite thing. It is like a man who should seek perfection by pouring more and more oil into the salad. And I confess that, in reading current articles about True Christianity and the duty of Service, I do feel that our salads are getting a great deal too oily. I admit that some such mixtures in the past were much too sharp. But I confessed in a recent article that I have been re-reading Swift; and I think we want a little more vinegar.
