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The New Machiavelli Chapter 10 Part 1 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter ten, Section one of the New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells.
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Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by
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Speaker 1: Antoniogus Seeking Associates one. I have told of my gradual
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Speaker 1: abandonment of the pretensions and habits of party liberalism. In
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Speaker 1: a sense, I was moving towards aristocracy, regarding the development
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Speaker 1: of the social and individual mental hinterland as the essential
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Speaker 1: thing in human progress. I passed on very naturally to
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Speaker 1: the practical assumption that we wanted what I may call hinterlanders.
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Speaker 1: Of course, I do not mean by aristocracy the changing
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Speaker 1: unorganized medley of rich people and privileged people who dominate
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Speaker 1: the civilized world of to day, but as opposed to this,
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Speaker 1: a possibility of co ordinating the will of the finer
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Speaker 1: individuals by habit and literature into a broad common aim.
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Speaker 1: We must have an aristocracy not of privilege, but of
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Speaker 1: understanding and purpose, or mankind will fail. I find this
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Speaker 1: dawning more and more clearly when I look through my
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Speaker 1: various writings of the years between nineteen o three and
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Speaker 1: nineteen ten. I was already emerging to plain statements. In
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Speaker 1: nineteen oh eight, I reasoned, after this fashion the line
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Speaker 1: of human improvement and the expansion of human life lies
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Speaker 1: in the direction of education and finer initiatives. If humanity
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Speaker 1: cannot develop an education far beyond anything that is now provided,
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Speaker 1: if it cannot collectively invent devices and solve problems on
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Speaker 1: a much richer broader scale than it does at the
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Speaker 1: present time, it cannot hope to achieve any very much
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Speaker 1: finer order or any more general happiness than it now enjoys.
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Speaker 1: We must believe, therefore, that it can develop such a
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Speaker 1: training and education, or we must abandon secular, constructive hope.
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Speaker 1: And here my peculiar difficulty as against crude democracy comes in.
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Speaker 1: If humanity at large is capable of that high education,
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Speaker 1: and those creative freedoms are hope demands, much more, must
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Speaker 1: its better and more vigorous types be so capable. And
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Speaker 1: if those who have power and leisure now and freedom
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Speaker 1: to respond to imaginative appeals cannot be one to the
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Speaker 1: idea of collective self development, then the whole of humanity
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Speaker 1: cannot be one to that. From that one passes to
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Speaker 1: what has become my general conception in politics, the conception
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Speaker 1: of the constructive imagination, working upon the vast complex of
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Speaker 1: powerful people, clever people, enterprising people, influential people amidst whom
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Speaker 1: power is diffused today to produce that self conscious, highly selective,
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Speaker 1: ope and minded, devoted, aristocratic culture which seems to me
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Speaker 1: to be the necessary next phase in the development of
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Speaker 1: human affairs. I see human progress not as the spontaneous
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Speaker 1: product of crowds of raw minds swayed by elementary needs,
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Speaker 1: but as a natural but elaborate result of intricate human
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Speaker 1: inter dependencies of human energy and curiosity, liberate in enacting
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Speaker 1: at leisure of human passions and motives, modified and redirected
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Speaker 1: by literature and art. But now the reader will understand
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Speaker 1: how it came about that. Disappointed by the essential littleness
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Speaker 1: of liberalism and disillusioned about the representative quality of the
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Speaker 1: professed socialists, I turned my mind more and more to
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Speaker 1: a scrutiny of the big people, the wealthy and influential
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Speaker 1: people against whom liberalism pits its forces. I was asking
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Speaker 1: myself definitely whether, after all, it was not my particular
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Speaker 1: job to work through them and not against them. Was
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Speaker 1: I not altogether out of my element as an ante?
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Speaker 1: Weren't there big, bold qualities about these people that common
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Speaker 1: men lack and the possibility of far more splendid dreams.
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Speaker 1: Were they really the obstacles, might they not be rather
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Speaker 1: the vehicles of the possible new braveries of life. Two.
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Speaker 1: The thoughts of the imperialist movement were obvious enough. The
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Speaker 1: conception of the Boer War had been clumsy and puerile,
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Speaker 1: the costly errors of that struggle appalling, and the subsequent
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Speaker 1: campaign of mister Chamberlain for tariff reform seemed calculated to
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Speaker 1: combine the financial adventurers of the empire in one vast
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Speaker 1: conspiracy against the consumer. The cant of imperialism was easy
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Speaker 1: to learn and use. It was speedily adopted by all
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Speaker 1: sorts of base enterprises and to all sorts of base ends.
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Speaker 1: But a big child is permitted big mischief. And my
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Speaker 1: mind was now continually returning to the persuasion that, after all,
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Speaker 1: in some development of the idea of imperial patriotism might
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Speaker 1: be found that wide, rough politically acceptable expression of a
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Speaker 1: constructive dream capable of sustaining a great educational and philosophical
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Speaker 1: movement such as no formula of liberalism supplied, the fact
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Speaker 1: that it readily took vulgar forms only witnessed to its
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Speaker 1: strong popular appeal. Mixed in with the noisonous and humbug
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Speaker 1: of the movement, there appeared a real regard for social efficiency,
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Speaker 1: a real spirit of animation and enterprise. There suddenly appeared
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Speaker 1: in my world. I saw them first, I think, in
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Speaker 1: nineteen o eight. A new sort of little boy, a
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Speaker 1: most agreeable development of the slouching, cunning, cigarette smoking, town
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Speaker 1: bred youngster. A small boy in a car key hat
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Speaker 1: and with bare knees, an athletic bearing, earnestly engaged in
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Speaker 1: wholesome and invigorating games up to an occasion a little
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Speaker 1: beyond his strength, the boy Scout. I liked the boy Scout,
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Speaker 1: and I find it difficult to express how much it
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Speaker 1: mattered to me, with my growing bias in favor of
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Speaker 1: deliberate national training, that liberalism had been able to produce,
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Speaker 1: and had indeed never attempted to produce, anything of this kind. Three.
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Speaker 1: In those days there existed a dining club called There
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Speaker 1: was some lost allusion to the exorcism of party feeling
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Speaker 1: in its title the Pentagram Circle. It included Bailey and
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Speaker 1: Dainton and myself, Sir Herbert Thorns, Lord Charles Kindling, Mins,
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Speaker 1: the poet Goebalt, the big railway man, Lord Gain fresh
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Speaker 1: from the settlement of Framboya and Rumbold, who later became
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Speaker 1: Home Secretary, and left us. We were men of all
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Speaker 1: parties and very various experiences, and our object was to
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Speaker 1: discuss the welfare of the Empire in a disinterested spirit.
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Speaker 1: We dined monthly at the Mermaid in Westminster, and for
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Speaker 1: a couple of years we kept up an average attendance
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Speaker 1: of ten out of fourteen. The dinner time was given
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Speaker 1: up to desultory conversation, and it is odd how warm
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Speaker 1: and good the social atmosphere of that little gathering became
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Speaker 1: as time went on. Then over the dessert, so soon
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Speaker 1: as the waiters had swept away the crumbs and ceased
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Speaker 1: to fret us, one of us would open with perhaps
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Speaker 1: fifteen or twenty minutes exposition of some specially prepared question,
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Speaker 1: and after him we would deliver ourselves in turn, each
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Speaker 1: for three or four minutes. When everyone present had spoken.
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Speaker 1: Once talk became general again, and it was rare. We
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Speaker 1: emerged upon Hendon Street before or midnight. Sometimes, as my
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Speaker 1: house was conveniently near, a lot of men would come
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Speaker 1: home with me and go on talking and smoking in
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Speaker 1: my dining room until two or three. We had Fred Neil,
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Speaker 1: that wild Irish journalist among us towards the end, and
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Speaker 1: his stupendous flow of words materially prolonged our closing discussions
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Speaker 1: and made our continuance impossible. I learned very much and
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Speaker 1: very many things at those dinners, But more particularly did
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Speaker 1: I become familiarized with the habits of mind of such
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Speaker 1: men as Neil crup Gain and the one or two
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Speaker 1: other new imperialists who belonged to us. They were nearly
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Speaker 1: all like Bailey Oxford men, though mostly of a younger generation,
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Speaker 1: and they were all mysteriously and inexplicably advocates of tariff reform,
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Speaker 1: as if it were the principle instead of at best
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Speaker 1: a secondary aspect of constructive policy. They seemed obsessed by
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Speaker 1: the idea that streams of trade could be diverted violently
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Speaker 1: so as to link the parts of the empire by
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Speaker 1: common interests, and they were persuaded, I still think, mistakenly
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Speaker 1: that tariff reform would have an immense popular appeal. They
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Speaker 1: were also very keen on military organization, and with a
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Speaker 1: curious little Martinette twist in their minds that boded ill
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Speaker 1: for that side of public liberty so much against them.
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Speaker 1: But they were disposed to spend money much more generously
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Speaker 1: on education and research of all sorts than our formless
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Speaker 1: host of liberals seemed likely to do. And they were
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Speaker 1: altogether more accessible than the young liberals to bold, constructive
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Speaker 1: ideas affecting the universities and upper classes. The liberals are
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Speaker 1: objectly afraid of the universities. I found myself constantly falling
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Speaker 1: into line with these men in our discussions, and more
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Speaker 1: and more hostile to Dayton's sentimentalizing evasions of definite schemes,
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Speaker 1: and men trust in such things as the spirit of
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Speaker 1: our people and the general trend of progress. It wasn't
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Speaker 1: that I thought them very much righter than their opponents.
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Speaker 1: I believe all definite party sides at any time are
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Speaker 1: bound to be about equally right and equally lopsided. But
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Speaker 1: that I thought I could get more out of them, and,
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Speaker 1: what was more important to me, more out of myself,
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Speaker 1: if I cooperated with them. By nineteen o eight, I
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Speaker 1: had already arrived at a point where I could be
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Speaker 1: definitely considering a transfer of my political allegiance. These abstract
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Speaker 1: questions are inseparably interwoven with my memory of a shining,
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Speaker 1: long white table, and our hock bottles and burgundy bottles,
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Speaker 1: and bottles of Perrier and Sangalmier, and the disturbed central
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Speaker 1: trophy of dessert, and scattered glasses and nutshells, and cigarette
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Speaker 1: ends and menu cards used for memoranda. I see all
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Speaker 1: Dayton sitting back and cocking his eye to the ceiling
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Speaker 1: in a way he had while he threw warmth into
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Speaker 1: the ancient platitudes of liberalism, and Min's leaning forward, and
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Speaker 1: a little like a cockatoo with a taste for confidences,
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Speaker 1: telling us in a hushed voice of his faith in
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Speaker 1: the destiny of mankind, Thorn's lounges, rolling his round face
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Speaker 1: and round eyes from speaker to speaker, and sounding the
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Speaker 1: visible depth of misery whenever Neil begins. Gerbolt and Gain
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Speaker 1: were given to conversation in undertones, and Bailey pursued mysterious
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Speaker 1: purposes in lisping whispers. It was Krapp attracted me most
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Speaker 1: he had, as people say, his eye on me from
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Speaker 1: the beginning. He used to speak at me and drifted
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Speaker 1: into a custom of coming home with me very regularly
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Speaker 1: for an after talk. He opened his heart to me.
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Speaker 1: Neither of us, he said, are dukes, and neither of
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Speaker 1: us are horny handed sons of oil. We want to
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Speaker 1: get hold of the handles, and to do that one
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Speaker 1: must go where the power is and give it just
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Speaker 1: as constructive a twist as we can. That's my toryism.
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Speaker 1: Is it kindlings or gereboats? No, but theirs is soft
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Speaker 1: and mine's hard. Mine will wear theirs alt. You and
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Speaker 1: I and Bailey are all after the same thing. And
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Speaker 1: why aren't we working together? Are you a Confederate? I asked, suddenly,
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Speaker 1: that's a secret nobody tells. He said, what are the Confederates?
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Speaker 1: After making aristocracy work? I suppose, just as I gather
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Speaker 1: you want to do. The Confederates were being heard of
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Speaker 1: at that time. They were at once attractive and repellent
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Speaker 1: to me, an odd secret society whose membership nobody knew
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Speaker 1: pledged it was said to impose tariff reform and an
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Speaker 1: ample constructive policy upon the conservatives in the press. At
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Speaker 1: any rate, they had an air of deliberately organized power.
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Speaker 1: I have no doubt the rumor of them greatly influenced
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Speaker 1: my ideas. In the end, I made some very rapid decisions,
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Speaker 1: but for nearly two years I was hesitating. Hesitations were
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Speaker 1: inevitable in such a matter. I was not dealing with
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Speaker 1: any simple question of principle, but with elusive and fluctuating
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Speaker 1: estimates of the trend of diverse forces and of the
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Speaker 1: nature of my own powers. All through that period I
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Speaker 1: was asking, over and over again, how far are these
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Speaker 1: confederates mere dreamers? How far, and this was more vital,
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Speaker 1: are they rendering lip service to social organizations? Is it
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Speaker 1: true they desire war because it confirms the ascendancy of
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Speaker 1: their class? How far can conservatism be induced to plan
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Speaker 1: and construct before it resists the thrust towards change? Is
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Speaker 1: it really, in bulk anything more than a mass of
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Speaker 1: prejudice and conceit, cynical indulgence, and a hard suspicion of
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Speaker 1: and hostility to the expropriated classes in the community. That
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Speaker 1: is a research which yields no statistics, an inquiry like
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Speaker 1: asking what is the ruling color of a chamelion? The
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Speaker 1: shadowy answer varied with my health, varied with my mood
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Speaker 1: and the conduct of the people I was watching. How
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Speaker 1: fine can people be? How generous? Not incidentally but all round?
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Speaker 1: How far can you educate sons beyond the outlook of
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Speaker 1: their fathers. And how far lift a rich, proud, self
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Speaker 1: indulgent class above the protest of its business agents and
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Speaker 1: solicitors and its own habits and vanity. Is civalry in
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Speaker 1: a class possible? Was it ever indeed or will it
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Speaker 1: ever indeed be possible? Is the progress that seems attainable
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Speaker 1: in certain directions worth the retrogression that may be its price? Four?
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Speaker 1: It was to the Pentagram Circle that I first broke
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Speaker 1: the new conceptions that were developing in my mind. I
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Speaker 1: count the evening of my paper the beginning of the
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Speaker 1: movement that created the Blue Weekly and our wing of
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Speaker 1: the present New Tory Party. I do that without any
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Speaker 1: excessive egotism, because my essay was no solitary man's production.
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Speaker 1: It was my reaction to forces that had come to
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Speaker 1: me very large through my fellow members. Its quick reception
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Speaker 1: by them showed that I was, so to speak, merely
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Speaker 1: the first of the chestnuts to pop. The atmospheric quality
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Speaker 1: of the evening stands out very vividly in my memory.
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Speaker 1: The night I remember was warmly foggy when after midnight
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Speaker 1: we went to finish our talk at my house. We
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Speaker 1: had recently changed the rules of the club to admit visitors,
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Speaker 1: and so it happened that I brought Britain and Krupp
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Speaker 1: introduced Arnold Shusmith, my former schoolfellow at City Merchants, and
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Speaker 1: now the wealthy successor of his father and elder brother.
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Speaker 1: I remember his heavy, inexpressively handsome face, lighting to his
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Speaker 1: rare smile at the sight of me, and how little
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Speaker 1: I dreamt of the tragic entanglement that was destined to
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Speaker 1: involve us. Both Gain was present and Esmere a newly
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Speaker 1: added member, But I think Bailey was absent. Either he
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Speaker 1: was absent or he said something so entirely characteristic and
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Speaker 1: undistinguished that it has left no impression on my mind.
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Speaker 1: I had broken a little from the traditions of the club.
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Speaker 1: Even in my title, which was deliberately a challenged to
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Speaker 1: the liberal idea, it was the world exists for exceptional people.
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Speaker 1: It is not the title I should choose now, for
16:51
Speaker 1: since that time I have got my phrase of mental
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Speaker 1: Hinterlander into journalistic use. I should say now the world
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Speaker 1: exists for mental hint Land. The notes I made of
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Speaker 1: that opening have long since vanished with a thousand other papers.
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Speaker 1: But some odd chance has preserved and brought with me
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Speaker 1: to Italy the menu for the evening. It's back black,
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Speaker 1: with the scrawled notes I made of the discussion from
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Speaker 1: my reply. I found it the other day among some
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Speaker 1: letters from Margaret and a copy of the nineteen o
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Speaker 1: nine report of the Poor Law Commission, also writ with
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Speaker 1: penciled marginalia. My opening was a criticism of the democratic
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Speaker 1: idea and method, upon lines such as I have already
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Speaker 1: sufficiently indicated in the preceding sections. I remember how old
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Speaker 1: Dayton fretted in his chair and tushed and pished at
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Speaker 1: that even as I gave it. And afterwards we are
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Speaker 1: treated to one of his platitudinous harangues, he sitting back
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Speaker 1: in his chair, with that small obstinate eye of his
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Speaker 1: fixed on the ceiling, and a sort of cadaverous glow
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Speaker 1: upon his face, repeating, quite regardless of all my reasoning,
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Speaker 1: and all that had been said by others in the debate,
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Speaker 1: the sacred empty phrases that were his soul's refuge from reality.
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Speaker 1: You may think it very clever, he said, with a
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Speaker 1: nod of his head to mark his sense of his point.
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Speaker 1: Not to trust in the people, I do and so on.
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Speaker 1: Nothing in his life or work had ever shown that
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Speaker 1: he did trust in the people. But that was beside
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Speaker 1: the mark. He was the party liberal, and these were
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Speaker 1: the party incantations. After my preliminary attack on vague democracy,
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Speaker 1: I went on to show that all human life was
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Speaker 1: virtually aristocratic. People must either recognize aristocracy in general or
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Speaker 1: else follow leaders, which is aristocracy in particular. And so
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Speaker 1: I came to my point that the reality of human
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Speaker 1: progress lay necessarily through the establishment of freedoms for the
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Speaker 1: human best and a collective receptivity and understanding. There was
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Speaker 1: a disgusted grunt from Dayton superman rubbish natzsure sure ugh.
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Speaker 1: I sailed on over him to my next propositions. The
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Speaker 1: prime essential in a progressive civilization was the establishment of
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Speaker 1: a more effective selective process for the privilege of higher
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Speaker 1: education and the very highest educational opportunity for the educable.
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Speaker 1: We were too apt to patronize scholarship winners as though
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Speaker 1: a scholarship was toffee, given as a reward for virtue.
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Speaker 1: It wasn't any reward at all. It was an invitation
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Speaker 1: to capacity. We had no more right to drag in
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Speaker 1: virtue or any merit. But quality than we had to
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Speaker 1: involve it in a search for the tallest man. We
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Speaker 1: didn't want a mere process for the selection of good
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Speaker 1: as distinguished from gifted and able boys. No, you don't
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Speaker 1: from Dayton. We wanted all the brilliant stuff in the
19:59
Speaker 1: world traded upon the development of the world. Just to
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Speaker 1: exasperate Dayton further, I put in a plea for gifts
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Speaker 1: as against character in educational, artistic, and legislative work. Good teaching,
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Speaker 1: I said, is better than good conduct. We are becoming
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Speaker 1: idiotic about character. Dayton was too moved to speak. He
20:23
Speaker 1: slewed round upon me an eye of agonized aversion. I
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Speaker 1: expiated on the small proportion of the available ability that
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Speaker 1: is really serving humanity today. I suppose today all the thought,
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Speaker 1: all the art, all the increments of knowledge that matter
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Speaker 1: are supplied, so far as the English speaking community is
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Speaker 1: concerned by how many, by three or four thousand individuals,
20:48
Speaker 1: less said thorns, to mean, more precise, by the mental
20:53
Speaker 1: hinterlands of three or four thousand individuals. We who know
20:58
Speaker 1: some of the band entertain no illusions as to their
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Speaker 1: innate rarity. We know that they are just the few
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Speaker 1: out of many, the few who got in our world
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Speaker 1: of chance and confusion, the timely stimulus, the apt suggestion
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Speaker 1: at the fortunate moment, the needed training, the leisure. The
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Speaker 1: rest are lost in the crowd, fail through the defects
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Speaker 1: of their qualities, become commonplace workmen and second rate professional
21:24
Speaker 1: men marry commonplace wives are as much waste as the
21:29
Speaker 1: driftage of superfluous pollen in a pine forest is waste. Decent,
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Speaker 1: honest lives, said Dayton, to his bread crumbs, with his
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Speaker 1: chin in his necktie. Wat and the people who do
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Speaker 1: get what we call opportunity get it usually in extremely
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Speaker 1: limited and cramping forms. No man lives a life of
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Speaker 1: intellectual productivity alone. He needs not only material and opportunity,
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Speaker 1: but helpers, resonators found and about what I might call
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Speaker 1: the real men. You want the sympathetic co operators who
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Speaker 1: help by understanding. It isn't that our sort of three
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Speaker 1: or four thousand is needlessly rare. It is sustained by
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Speaker 1: far too small and undifferentiated a public. Most of the
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Speaker 1: good men we know are not really doing the very
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Speaker 1: best work of their gifts. Nearly all are a little adapted,
22:25
Speaker 1: most as shockingly adapted to some second best use. Now
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Speaker 1: I take it This is the very center and origin
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Speaker 1: of the muddle, futility, and unhappiness that distresses us. It's
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Speaker 1: the cardinal problem of the state to discover, develop, and
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Speaker 1: use the exceptional gifts of men, and I see that
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Speaker 1: best done. I drift more and more away from the
22:48
Speaker 1: common stuff of legislative and administrative activity by quite revolutionary
22:54
Speaker 1: development of the educational machinery, but by a still more
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Speaker 1: unprecedented attempt to keep science going, to keep literature going,
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Speaker 1: and to keep what is the necessary spur of all
23:05
Speaker 1: science and literature, an intelligent and appreciative criticism going. You know,
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Speaker 1: none of these things have ever been kept going hitherto.
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Speaker 1: They've come unexpectedly and inexplicably her her from Dayton cough,
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Speaker 1: nodding of the head, and an expression of mystical profundity.
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Speaker 1: They've lit up a civilization and vanished to give place
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Speaker 1: to darkness again. Now the modern state doesn't mean to
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Speaker 1: go back to darkness again, and so it's got to
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Speaker 1: keep its light burning. I went on to attack the
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Speaker 1: present organization of our schools and universities, which seemed elaborately
23:43
Speaker 1: designed to turn the well behaved, uncritical, and uncreative men
23:48
Speaker 1: of each generation into the authoritative leaders of the next
23:52
Speaker 1: and I suggested remedies upon lines that I have already
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Speaker 1: indicated in the earlier chapters of this story. So far,
24:01
Speaker 1: I had the substance of the club with me, but
24:04
Speaker 1: I opened new ground and set Crupp agog by confessing
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Speaker 1: my doubt from which party or combination of groups, these
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Speaker 1: developments of science and literature and educational organization could most
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Speaker 1: reasonably be expected. I looked up to find Crupp's dark
24:21
Speaker 1: little eye intent upon me. There I left it to them.
24:27
Speaker 1: We had an astonishingly good discussion. Neal burst once, but
24:32
Speaker 1: we emerged from his flood after a time, and Dayton
24:35
Speaker 1: had his interlude. The rest was all close, keen examination
24:39
Speaker 1: of my problem. I see Crupp now with his arm
24:44
Speaker 1: bent before him on the table in a way we had,
24:47
Speaker 1: as though it was jointed throughout its length, like a
24:49
Speaker 1: lobster's antenna, his plump, short fingered hand crushing up a
24:53
Speaker 1: walnut shell into smaller and smaller fragments. Remington, he said,
25:00
Speaker 1: has given us the data for a movement, A really
25:03
Speaker 1: possible movement is not only possible, but necessary, urgently necessary.
25:08
Speaker 1: I think if the Empire is to go on, we're
25:11
Speaker 1: working altogether too much at the social basement in education
25:16
Speaker 1: and training, said Gaine. Remington is right about our neglect
25:20
Speaker 1: of the higher levels. Britain made a good contribution with
25:24
Speaker 1: an analysis of what he called the spirit of a
25:27
Speaker 1: country and what made it. The modern community needs its
25:31
Speaker 1: serious men to be artistic, and its artists to be
25:34
Speaker 1: taken seriously. I remember his saying the day has gone
25:39
Speaker 1: by for either dull responsibility or merely witty art. I
25:45
Speaker 1: remember very vividly how Shuesmith harped on an idea I
25:49
Speaker 1: had thrown out of using some sort of reviewer weekly
25:52
Speaker 1: to express and elaborate these conceptions of a new severer
25:57
Speaker 1: aristocratic culture. It would have to be done amazingly well,
26:03
Speaker 1: said Britain. And my mind went back to my school
26:06
Speaker 1: days and that ancient enterprise of ours, and how Cossington
26:10
Speaker 1: had rushed it. Well. Cossington had too many papers now
26:14
Speaker 1: a days to interfere with us, and we perhaps had
26:17
Speaker 1: learnt some defensive devices. But this thing has to be
26:21
Speaker 1: linked to some political party, said Crupp, with his eye
26:25
Speaker 1: on me. You can't get away from that. The Liberals,
26:29
Speaker 1: he added, have never done anything for research or literature.
26:34
Speaker 1: They had a royal Commission on the Dramatic Censorship, said Thorns,
26:38
Speaker 1: with a note of minute fairness. It shows what they
26:42
Speaker 1: were made of. He added. It's what I've told Remington
26:46
Speaker 1: again and again, said Crupp. We've got to pick up
26:50
Speaker 1: the tradition of aristocracy, reorganize it and make it work.
26:54
Speaker 1: But he's certainly suggested a method. There won't be much
26:57
Speaker 1: aristocracy to pick up, said dat and darkly to the ceiling.
27:02
Speaker 1: If the House of Lord throws out the budget, all
27:05
Speaker 1: the more reason for picking up, said Neil, for we
27:08
Speaker 1: can't do without it. Will they go to the bad
27:11
Speaker 1: or will they rise from the ashes aristocrats? Indeed, if
27:15
Speaker 1: the Liberals come in overwhelmingly, said Britain, it's we who
27:19
Speaker 1: might decide that, said Crupp insiduously. I agree, said Gaine.
27:25
Speaker 1: No one can tell, said Thorns. I doubt if they
27:28
Speaker 1: will get beaten. It was an odd, fragmentary discussion that night.
27:34
Speaker 1: We were all with ideas in our minds, at once
27:36
Speaker 1: fine and imperfect. We threw out suggestions that showed themselves
27:41
Speaker 1: at once far inadequate, and we tried to qualify them
27:45
Speaker 1: by minor self contradictions. Britain I think got more said
27:50
Speaker 1: than anyone you all seem to think you want to
27:54
Speaker 1: organize people, particular groups and classes of individuals. He insisted,
27:59
Speaker 1: it is that that's the standing era of politicians. You
28:03
Speaker 1: want to organize a culture. Civilization isn't a matter of
28:08
Speaker 1: concrete groupings. It's a matter of prevailing ideas. The problem
28:13
Speaker 1: is how to make bold, clear ideas prevail. The question
28:17
Speaker 1: for Remington and us is just what groups of people
28:20
Speaker 1: will most help this culture forward? Yes, but how are
28:24
Speaker 1: the lords going to behave, said Krupp. You yourself were
28:28
Speaker 1: asking that a little while ago. If they win or
28:32
Speaker 1: if they lose, gain maintained, there will be a movement
28:35
Speaker 1: to reorganize aristocracy, reform of the House of Lords, they'll
28:39
Speaker 1: call the political form of it. Bailey thinks that, said someone.
28:44
Speaker 1: The labor people want abolition, said someone. Let them, said Thorns.
28:49
Speaker 1: He became audible, sketching a possibility of action. Suppose all
28:54
Speaker 1: of us were able to work together. It's just one
28:57
Speaker 1: of those indeterminate, confused event times ahead, when a steady
29:02
Speaker 1: jet of ideas might produce enormous results. Leave me out
29:06
Speaker 1: of it, said Dayton. If you please, we should, said Thorns.
29:11
Speaker 1: Under his breath. I took up Crupp's initiative, I remember
29:15
Speaker 1: and expanded it. I believe we could do extensive things.
29:20
Speaker 1: I insisted. Revivals and reversions of Toryism have been tried
29:25
Speaker 1: so often, said Thorns, from the Young England movement onward,
29:30
Speaker 1: not one, but has produced its enduring effects. I said,
29:34
Speaker 1: it's the peculiarity of English Conservatism that it's persistently progressive
29:39
Speaker 1: and rejuvenescent. I think it must have been about that
29:43
Speaker 1: point that Dayton fled our presence after some clumsy sentence
29:48
Speaker 1: that I decided upon reflection, was intended to remind me
29:52
Speaker 1: of my duty to my party. Then I remember Thorn's
29:56
Speaker 1: firing doubts at me obliquely across the table. You can't
30:00
Speaker 1: run a country through its spoilt children, he said, what
30:03
Speaker 1: you call aristocrats or really spoilts children? They've had too
30:07
Speaker 1: much of everything except bracing experience. Children can always be educated,
30:13
Speaker 1: said Crupp. I said, spoilt children, said Thorns. Look at
30:19
Speaker 1: Thorn's said I If this budget row leads to a
30:22
Speaker 1: storm and these big people get their power clipped, what's
30:26
Speaker 1: going to happen? Have you thought of that? When they
30:29
Speaker 1: go out lock Stock and Barrel? Who comes in nature
30:33
Speaker 1: abhors a vacuum, said Crupp, Supporting me. Bailey's trained officials
30:39
Speaker 1: suggested gaine quacks with a certificate of approval from Altiora,
30:44
Speaker 1: said Thorns. I admit, with the horrors of the alternative,
30:48
Speaker 1: there'd be a massacre in three years. One may go
30:52
Speaker 1: on trying possibilities forever, I said, one thing emerges, whatever
30:57
Speaker 1: accidents happen. Our civilizedization needs, and almost consciously needs, a
31:03
Speaker 1: culture of fine creative minds and all the necessary tolerances, opennesses,
31:09
Speaker 1: considerations that march with that. For my own part, I
31:14
Speaker 1: think that is the most vital thing. Build your ship
31:17
Speaker 1: of state as you will, get your men as you will.
31:20
Speaker 1: I concentrate on what is clearly the affair of my
31:23
Speaker 1: sort of man. I want to ensure the quality of
31:26
Speaker 1: the quarter deck here here, said Shoesmith, suddenly his first
31:31
Speaker 1: remark for a long time, the first rate figure, said Shoesmith,
31:35
Speaker 1: gripping it. Our danger is in missing that, I went on.
31:41
Speaker 1: Muddle isn't ended by transferring power from the muddle headed
31:45
Speaker 1: few to the muddle headed many, and then cheating the
31:48
Speaker 1: many out of it again in the interests of a
31:50
Speaker 1: bureaucracy of sham experts. But that seems the limit of
31:55
Speaker 1: the liberal imagination. There is no real progress in a
31:59
Speaker 1: country except a rise in the level of its free
32:02
Speaker 1: intellectual activity. All other progress is secondary and dependent. If
32:08
Speaker 1: you take on Bailey's dreams of efficient machinery and a
32:11
Speaker 1: sort of fanatical discipline with no free moving brains behind it,
32:16
Speaker 1: confused ugliness becomes rigid ugliness, that's all, No doubt, things
32:21
Speaker 1: are moving from looseness to discipline, and from irresponsible controls
32:26
Speaker 1: to organize controls. And also, and rather contrariwise, everything is becoming,
32:31
Speaker 1: as people say, democratized. But all the more need in
32:35
Speaker 1: that for an arc in which the living element may
32:38
Speaker 1: be saved. Hear, hear, said Shoesmith, faint but pursuing. It
32:44
Speaker 1: must have been in my house afterwards that Shoesmith became noticeable.
32:49
Speaker 1: He seemed trying to say something vague and difficult that
32:52
Speaker 1: he didn't get said at all. On that occasion, we
32:56
Speaker 1: could do immense things with a weekly he repeated, echoing
32:59
Speaker 1: the I think, And there he left off and became
33:03
Speaker 1: a mute expressiveness. And it was only afterwards, when I
33:07
Speaker 1: was in bed, that I saw we had our capitalist
33:09
Speaker 1: in our hands. We parted that night on my doorstep,
33:14
Speaker 1: in a tremendous glow. But in that sort of glow
33:17
Speaker 1: one doesn't act upon without much reconsideration. And it was
33:22
Speaker 1: some months before I made my decision to follow up
33:25
Speaker 1: the indications of that opening talk. Five. I find my
33:33
Speaker 1: thoughts lingering about the pentagram circle. In my developments. It
33:38
Speaker 1: played a large part, not so much by starting new
33:42
Speaker 1: trains of thought as by confirming the practicability of things
33:46
Speaker 1: I had already hesitatingly entertained. Discussion with these other men
33:51
Speaker 1: so prominently involved in current affairs, endorsed views that otherwise
33:56
Speaker 1: would have seemed only a little less remote from actuality
34:00
Speaker 1: than the Guardians of Plato or the labor laws of Moore.
34:04
Speaker 1: Among other questions that were never very distant from our discussions,
34:08
Speaker 1: that came up to every topic was the true significance
34:12
Speaker 1: of democracy, tariff reform as a method of international hostility,
34:17
Speaker 1: and the imminence of war. On the first issue, I
34:21
Speaker 1: can still recall little Bailey, glib and winking explaining that
34:25
Speaker 1: democracy was really just a dodge for getting assent to
34:28
Speaker 1: the ordinances of the expert official by means of the
34:31
Speaker 1: polling booth. If they don't like things said he. They
34:35
Speaker 1: can vote for the opposition candidate and see what happens then,
34:39
Speaker 1: And that, you see, is why we don't want proportional representation.
34:43
Speaker 1: To let in the wild men. I opened my eyes
34:47
Speaker 1: the lids had dropped for a moment under the caress
34:49
Speaker 1: of those smooth sounds, to see if Bailey's artful forefinger
34:54
Speaker 1: wasn't at the side of his predominant nose. The international
34:59
Speaker 1: situation exercised us greatly. Our meetings were pervaded by the
35:04
Speaker 1: feeling that all things moved towards a day of reckoning
35:07
Speaker 1: with Germany. And I was largely instrumental in keeping up
35:11
Speaker 1: the suggestion that India was in a state of unstable equilibrium,
35:16
Speaker 1: that sooner or later something must happen there, something very
35:19
Speaker 1: serious to our empire. Dayton frankly detested these topics. He
35:25
Speaker 1: was full of that old Middle Victorian persuasion that whatever
35:29
Speaker 1: is inconvenient or disagreeable to the English mind could be
35:33
Speaker 1: annihilated by not thinking about it. He used to sit
35:37
Speaker 1: low in his chair and look mulish. Militarism, he would declare,
35:41
Speaker 1: in a tone of the utmost moral fervor is a curse.
35:45
Speaker 1: It's an unmitigated curse. Then he would cough shortly and
35:50
Speaker 1: twitch his head back and frown, and seem astonished beyond
35:53
Speaker 1: measure that after this conclusive statement we could still go
35:57
Speaker 1: on talking of war. All our imperialists were obsessed by
36:02
Speaker 1: the thought of international conflict, and their influence revived for
36:06
Speaker 1: a time those uneasinesses that had been aroused in me
36:09
Speaker 1: for the first time by my continental journey with Willesley
36:13
Speaker 1: and by Meredith's one of our conquerors. That quite justifiable
36:18
Speaker 1: dread of a punishment for all the slackness, mental dishonesty, presumption,
36:23
Speaker 1: mercenary respectability, and sentimentalized commercialism of the Victorian period at
36:29
Speaker 1: the hands of the better organized, more vigorous, and now
36:33
Speaker 1: far more highly civilized peoples of Central Europe seemed to
36:37
Speaker 1: me to have both a good and bad series of consequences.
36:41
Speaker 1: It seemed the only thing capable of bracing English minds
36:44
Speaker 1: to education, sustained constructive effort and research. But on the
36:49
Speaker 1: other hand, it produced the quality of a panic. Hasty
36:53
Speaker 1: preparation impatience of thought are wasteful and sometimes quite futile immediacy.
37:00
Speaker 1: In nineteen o nine, for example, there was a vast
37:03
Speaker 1: clamor for eight additional dreadnoughts. We want eight, and we
37:07
Speaker 1: won't wait. But no clamor at all about our national
37:11
Speaker 1: waste of inventive talent, our mean standard of intellectual attainment,
37:16
Speaker 1: our disingenuous criticism, and the consequent failure to distinguish men
37:21
Speaker 1: of the quality needed to carry on the modern type
37:24
Speaker 1: of war. Almost universally, we have the wrong men in
37:28
Speaker 1: our places of responsibility and the right men in no
37:31
Speaker 1: place at all. Almost universally we have poorly qualified, hesitating
37:38
Speaker 1: and resentful subordinates because our criticism is worthless and so
37:43
Speaker 1: habitually as to be now almost unconsciously dishonest. Germany is
37:48
Speaker 1: beating England in every matter upon which competition is possible,
37:52
Speaker 1: because she attended sedulously to her collective mind for sixty
37:56
Speaker 1: pregnant years, Because in spite of tremendous DearS, she is
38:01
Speaker 1: still far more anxious for quality and achievement than we are.
38:05
Speaker 1: I remember saying that in my paper. From that, I remember,
38:10
Speaker 1: I went on to an image that had flashed into
38:12
Speaker 1: my mind. The British Empire, I said, is like some
38:16
Speaker 1: of those early vertebrateed monsters, the brontosaurus and the Atlantosaurus
38:22
Speaker 1: and such like. It sacrifices intellect to character Its backbone,
38:27
Speaker 1: that is to say, especially in the visceral region, is
38:30
Speaker 1: bigger than its cranium. It's no accident that things are so.
38:35
Speaker 1: We've worked for backbone. We brag about backbone, and if
38:39
Speaker 1: the joints are ankulosed, so much the better. We're still
38:43
Speaker 1: but only half awake to our error. You can't change that,
38:46
Speaker 1: suddenly turn it round and make it go backwards, interjected Thorns.
38:53
Speaker 1: It's trying to do that, I said in places, and
38:57
Speaker 1: afterwards Krupp declared I had forgotten a nightmare which haunted
39:00
Speaker 1: him of nights. He was trying desperately and belatedly to
39:05
Speaker 1: blow a brain as one blows soap bubbles, and such
39:08
Speaker 1: a metzoic saurian as I had cojured up. While the
39:11
Speaker 1: clumsy monster's fate all teeth and brains crept nearer and nearer.
39:18
Speaker 1: I've grown. I think since those days, out of the
39:20
Speaker 1: urgency of that apprehension, I still think a European war,
39:25
Speaker 1: and conceivably a very humiliating war for England, may occur
39:29
Speaker 1: at no very distant date. But I do not think
39:32
Speaker 1: there is any such heroic quality in our governing class
39:36
Speaker 1: as will make that war catastrophic. The prevailing spirit in
39:40
Speaker 1: English life, it is one of the essential secrets of
39:43
Speaker 1: our imperial endurance, is one of underbred aggression in prosperity
39:48
Speaker 1: and diplomatic compromise in moments of danger. We bully haughtily
39:53
Speaker 1: where we can, and assimilate where we must. It is
39:57
Speaker 1: not for nothing that our upper and middle class u
40:00
Speaker 1: is educated by teachers of the highest character, scholars and gentlemen,
40:05
Speaker 1: men who can pretend quite honestly that Darwinism hasn't upset
40:09
Speaker 1: the historical fool of man, that cricket is moral training,
40:13
Speaker 1: and that socialism is an outrage upon the teachings of Christ.
40:18
Speaker 1: A sort of dignified dexterity of evasion is the national
40:22
Speaker 1: reward Germany, with a larger population, a vigorous and irreconcilable proletariat,
40:29
Speaker 1: a bolder intellectual training, a harsher spirit, can scarcely fail
40:34
Speaker 1: to drive us at last to a realization of intolerable strain.
40:40
Speaker 1: So we may never fight at all. The war of
40:43
Speaker 1: preparations that has been going on for thirty years may
40:47
Speaker 1: end like a sham. Fight at last in an umpire's decision,
40:51
Speaker 1: we shall proudly but very firmly take the second place
40:55
Speaker 1: for my own part. Since I love England as much
40:58
Speaker 1: as I detest a present lethod soul, I pray for
41:01
Speaker 1: a chastening war. I wouldn't mind her flag in the
41:05
Speaker 1: dirt if only her spirit would come out of it.
41:08
Speaker 1: So I was able to shake off that earlier fear
41:11
Speaker 1: of some final and irrevocable destruction, truncating all my schemes.
41:16
Speaker 1: At the most, a European war would be a dramatic
41:20
Speaker 1: episode in the reconstruction I had in view. In India too,
41:25
Speaker 1: I no longer foresee as once I was inclined to
41:29
Speaker 1: see disaster. The English rule in India is surely one of
41:33
Speaker 1: the most extraordinary accidents that has ever happened in history.
41:37
Speaker 1: We are there like a man who has fallen off
41:39
Speaker 1: a ladder onto the neck of an elephant and doesn't
41:42
Speaker 1: know what to do or how to get down until
41:46
Speaker 1: something happens, he remains. Our functions in India are absurd.
41:51
Speaker 1: We English do not own that country, do not even
41:54
Speaker 1: rule it. We make nothing happen. At the most, we
41:57
Speaker 1: prevent things happening. We suppress our own literature There most
42:02
Speaker 1: English people cannot even go to this land they possess.
42:06
Speaker 1: The authorities would prevent it. If Messrs Perone or Cook
42:10
Speaker 1: organized a cheap tour of Manchester operatives, it would be stopped.
42:15
Speaker 1: No one dare bring the average English voter face to
42:18
Speaker 1: face with the reality of India, or let the Indian
42:22
Speaker 1: native have a glimpse of the English voter. In my
42:25
Speaker 1: time I have talked to English statesmen, Indian officials and
42:29
Speaker 1: ex officials, viceroys, soldiers, everyone who might be supposed to
42:34
Speaker 1: know what India signifies. And I have prayed them to
42:37
Speaker 1: tell me what they thought we were up to there.
42:40
Speaker 1: I am not writing without my book in these matters,
42:43
Speaker 1: and beyond a phrase or so about even handed justice
42:47
Speaker 1: and look at our sedition trials, they told me nothing.
42:51
Speaker 1: Time after time, I have heard of that apocryphal native
42:54
Speaker 1: ruler in the Northwest, who, when asked what would happen
42:57
Speaker 1: if we left India, replied that in a wi his
43:00
Speaker 1: men would be in the saddle, and in six months
43:03
Speaker 1: not a rupine nor a virgin would be left in
43:05
Speaker 1: Lower Bengul. That is always given as our conclusive justification.
43:11
Speaker 1: But is it our business to preserve the rupees and
43:13
Speaker 1: virgins of Lower Bengul in a sort of magic and conclusiveness.
43:18
Speaker 1: Better plunder than paralysis, better fire and sword than futility.
43:24
Speaker 1: Our flag is spread over the peninsula, without plans, without intentions,
43:29
Speaker 1: a vast preventative. The sum total of our policy is
43:33
Speaker 1: to arrest any discussion, any conferences that would enable the
43:37
Speaker 1: Indians to work out a tolerable scheme with the future
43:40
Speaker 1: for themselves. But that does not arrest the resentment of
43:44
Speaker 1: men held back from life. Consider what it must be
43:49
Speaker 1: for the educated Indian sitting at the feast of contemporary possibilities,
43:54
Speaker 1: with his mouth gagged and his hands bound behind him,
43:58
Speaker 1: the spirit of insurrection and breaks out. In spite of
44:01
Speaker 1: espionage and seizures. Our conflictory action developed stupendous absurdities. The
44:08
Speaker 1: other day the British Empire was taking off and examining
44:12
Speaker 1: printed cotton stomach raps for seditions, emblems and inscriptions. In
44:19
Speaker 1: some manner. We shall have to come out of India.
44:21
Speaker 1: We have had our chants, and we have demonstrated nothing
44:25
Speaker 1: but the appalling dullness of our national imagination. We are
44:29
Speaker 1: not good enough to do anything with India. Codure and
44:32
Speaker 1: flack and gates and Dayton cladding bowl in the club
44:36
Speaker 1: and the home churchmen in the home cant about character,
44:40
Speaker 1: worship of strenuous force, and contempt of truth. For the
44:44
Speaker 1: sake of such men and things as these we must abandon.
44:47
Speaker 1: In fact, if not in appearance that empty domination, had
44:52
Speaker 1: we great schools and are powerful teaching, could we both
44:56
Speaker 1: great men, had we the spirit of truth and creation
44:59
Speaker 1: in our life lives, then indeed it might be different.
45:03
Speaker 1: But a race that bears a scepter must carry gifts
45:06
Speaker 1: to justify it. It does not follow that we shall
45:10
Speaker 1: be driven catastrophically from India. That was my earlier mistake.
45:15
Speaker 1: We are not proud enough in our bones to be
45:17
Speaker 1: ruined by India as Spain was by her empire. We
45:21
Speaker 1: may be able to abandon India with an air of
45:24
Speaker 1: still remaining there. It is our new method. We train
45:29
Speaker 1: our future rulers in the public schools to have a
45:32
Speaker 1: very wholesome respect for strength, And as soon as a
45:35
Speaker 1: power arises in India in spite of us, be it
45:39
Speaker 1: a man, or a culture, or a native state, we
45:42
Speaker 1: shall be willing to deal with it. We may or
45:44
Speaker 1: may not have a war, but our governing class will
45:47
Speaker 1: be quick to learn when we are beaten, then they
45:50
Speaker 1: will repeat our South African diplomacy and arrange for some
45:54
Speaker 1: settlement that will abandon the reality such as it is,
45:58
Speaker 1: and preserve the semblance of power. The conqueror de facto
46:02
Speaker 1: will become the new loyal Britain, and the democracy at
46:06
Speaker 1: home will be invited to celebrate our recession triumphantly. I
46:11
Speaker 1: am no believer in the imminent dissolution of our empire.
46:14
Speaker 1: I am less and less inclined to see, in either
46:17
Speaker 1: India or Germany the probability of an abrupt truncation of
46:21
Speaker 1: those slow, intellectual and moral constructions which are the essentials
46:25
Speaker 1: of state craft. End of Chapter ten, Section one