by John Buchan
Had some Rip van Winkle gone to sleep on the eve of the War, and awakened any time in the first decade of peace to cast an eye over our society, he would have been first impressed, I think, by the superficial levelling up of classes. Men and women could no longer be judged by their clothes. These had become simpler and more uniform. A clerk was as well dressed, and in much the same way, as a Guards officer, and a village girl as the lady of the manor. People — the women especially — would have appeared to him slimmer and more vital. He would have missed the old stately ritual of London life. The capital now looked more like a provincial city, for the top-hat had largely gone, club life was a declining thing, the great mansions had become blocks of flats, and the “season,” shorn of its old splendours, now lasted most of the year. He would have been struck by the trimness and the healthier appearance of youth. Parliament, perhaps, would have seemed to him rather a shabby assembly. In the country he would have found towns spreading into mushroom suburbs, and ancient villages blotched with bungalows. He would have been amazed at the size and populousness of the roads, and the scarcity of horses. Famous houses which he had known were now either pulled down or turned into schools and asylums, the parks had been ploughed up and built upon, and their owners had migrated to suburban or continental lodgings with a few family heirlooms and the war-medals of their dead. But he would have found village life gayer and freer, if less idiomatic. He would have noted, too, that the hunt meets were as large as ever, and that a new gentry had made its appearance. As after the Wars of the Roses a small squirearchy was growing up on the ruin of the grandees; and he would have consoled himself by reflecting that it was the new modest manors which had produced some of the greatest Elizabethans.
As he looked more closely into things our Rip van Winkle would have been awed by the widespread passion for entertainment. He remembered that Disraeli more than half a century before had told Lord Rowton that the true revolution would come in Britain when the bourgeoisie took to amusing itself. Games bulked larger than ever in the nation’s eyes. The cinema had become a universal habit; twenty millions visited it each week. There were now seven million wireless sets, the remotest hamlets were forests of wireless poles, and daily about half the population was entertained and instructed from the air. Instructed! — that was what impressed him. The demand for a greater margin of leisure involved the means of filling that leisure, and almost every form of entertainment had its educative side. There would soon be no more pleasant oases of unsophistication. The workers and the peasants were getting to know how their neighbours lived and how the world lived. Knowledge was being diffused in the widest commonalty, shallow perhaps, but still knowledge. A mighty transformation was in progress, managed by the people themselves and not by their Government. But the Government too was affected. The press might disparage or belaud a statesman, but that statesman now broadcast urbi et orbi, and the whole nation could hear, and judge, his words.
The awakened sleeper observed another thing. The cities were straggling into the country as never before, but the nation was becoming alive to the loss. It was as if the perils and discomforts of war had made people more conscious of their heritage of ancient peace. The old distinction between town-dweller and country-dweller was less rigid. New means of transport took the urban population easily to remote places, the interest in wild nature was spreading, men and women, whose eyes had once looked scarcely beyond their own street, were now alive to the riches of their native land. But if Britain awoke to the consciousness of a great possession, this awakening would mean desecration unless the possession were protected. The countryside, so long neglected, was rediscovered and christened “rural England,” and there was a vigorous movement to preserve rustic beauty, now badly scarred but not beyond hope, a movement springing not from the few but from the many.
III
After every great effort there is a natural expectation of some quickening and sublimation of the human soul. It may take the form of a religious revival, or some sudden flowering of the creative mind. The war with Spain was followed by the Puritan kindling of the religious consciousness, by Shakespeare and Milton; the war with Napoleon by the romantic revival in letters and the zealous evangelicalism of the early nineteenth century. But the Great War had no such fruit. The instinct of men to huddle into groups for comfort did indeed produce a few mob-religions, and the dislocation of things and the breakdown of old standards brought forth a host of new literary modes. But there was no strong creative impulse to be discerned, or any notable enlargement of spirit. The struggle had taken too heavy a toll of human vitality.
The characteristic note of the first post-War years was a certain peevishness. A thing had only to have won general acceptance in the past to be flouted. A starveling intellectualism discounted whatever to the ordinary mind seemed moving and heroic. A kind of minor history became popular, in which the writers strove to strip the aura from every great character or great drama of the past, like some Greek of the decadence who chipped the nose of an Apollo of Pheidias in order to make the Goths laugh. In fiction the fashion was for the cloacal or the minutely analytic; in poetry for a breakdown of all shape and a petulant defiance of the orthodox. At the same time an antiquarian spirit was abroad; obscure ancients were disinterred and deified, and the pastiche became a fashionable form. In belief, in morals, and in art there was a craze for disintegration, which sought to reduce solid things to mere nebulæ of atoms. The prevalent mood was one of bitterness and disillusion, and, since the older standards were rejected, of an extreme arrogance. To be modern was the only proof of quality, and the “post-War mind,” brittle and insecure, was regarded as the ultimate flowering of the human spirit. All the familiar clichés of a decadence were in use, and an imperfect education prevented the users from realising how hoary were their darling novelties. This intellectual temper was matched in social life by a kind of joyless gaiety, without manners or grace. Anxious elders in their haste set down the new youth as trivial in soul and shallow in mind.
The mood did not last. At first the younger generation, more demoralised by the War than those who had fought in it, clamoured only for a safe niche and a “soft option” in life. Ease and security seemed the only ends. But presently youth found its bearings again. In letters there appeared a manlier strain, a return of confidence, humanity and hope. The writers might be extravagant and wildly empirical, but they were cheerfully facing a new world and striving after a new interpretation. If they had not found a gospel they recognised the need of one. To those who had the chance of seeing much of the youth of Britain, the change between the beginning and the end of the post-war decade seemed little short of a miracle. In spite of growing difficulties in making a living, young men carried their heads high. It was as if they realised that they were living in a rough world, and must make certain that there was no hardship in it which they could not face. There was an honest craving for discipline and construction, for they had grown tired of the atomist and the disintegrator. The appeal to many of creeds like communism and fascism was simply the opportunity they gave for sacrifice. The new temper had its perils, but it had also its splendid promise. The idealism, which seemed to have gone to earth after peace, was now again abroad in the world. There was visible, too, one incontrovertible gain from the War. It had done much to break down class barriers and kill a shoddy gentility. The young man of the educated classes to-day is at home, as his father could never have been, in a Hull trawler, or working on the soil with unemployed miners, or lending a hand with the Canadian harvest. He is tougher in fibre, more resourceful, more human.
IV
The older histories were built up on the fortunes of cabinets and parliaments. Politics were “decontrolled,” like other things, when the Coalition Cabinet fell in the autumn of 1922, but the Governments which ensued were not the milestones in the national progress which Governments had once been. Mr. Bonar Law succeeded Mr. Lloyd George, and, when ill-health compelled him to resign, he was followed by Mr. Baldw
in. The election in the autumn of 1923 brought for the first time a Labour Government into office, a minority Government dependent on Liberal votes. It fell in the next autumn, and for five years the Conservatives were in power with a great majority. In 1929 a Labour Government was again installed, also a minority Government, and in 1931 came the economic crisis and the formation of a National Government under the Labour Prime Minister. But, except the last, these were changes of no profound significance. Any Government, whatever its election programme, had to face the same problems as its predecessor, and very much in the same way. Urgent facts had played havoc with party creeds. At no time in our history, perhaps, has party interest sunk so low as in recent years. This is due in some degree to the fact that our democracy is now plebiscitary, and with universal franchise an election has become a scuffle and a gamble as compared with the old, well-planned contests. But it is largely due to the fact that in a crisis like war or impending bankruptcy the ordinary party business means little. Its use will come again, but that day is not yet.
Few of the men remain who were the foremost public figures before and during the War. The great sailors survive, but of the generals Haig and three of his army commanders are gone. Asquith and Balfour, Curzon and Milner have taken with them some of the high traditions of an earlier Britain, dignity in speech and demeanour, subtlety and precision of thought, a passionate belief in an imperial mission, and a supreme administrative talent. This is not the place to write of those who are left, except to say that the succession is not broken. War left a lamentable gap in our youth, but happily there are brilliant younger figures to bridge that gap. One fact may be noted. The War and the first years of peace did not increase the prestige of Parliament, but the downfall of constitutional government in Europe has revived it. Once again Parliament means much to our people, a thing of their own contriving which they will defend against all attacks, since it is intertwined with their liberties. It is an opportune moment, if statesmen are wise, for that reform in its procedure and in its mode of election which will fit it to meet the stresses of a new age. Plebiscitary democracy, unless it be wisely regulated, may relapse into a meaningless see-saw.
In the disorder of the world every people has felt the need of concentration. This has been done elsewhere by nations surrendering their wills to dictators and camarillas. Britain, with a wiser instinct, has clung to her old institutions, but has modified them to meet new needs. The formation of a National Government in August 1931 was typical of our land, which brought to the task all her constitutional resources. And not least the Throne. On August 21st the King arrived at Balmoral for his Scottish holiday; next day he returned to London. It was not for him to have any economic policy or any preference as between parties. The common procedure would have been for Mr. Macdonald to resign, and give place to the Conservatives. But, as the trustee of the nation, the King felt that a national emergency should be faced by a national front. His view was accepted by Ministers, and a National Government was formed. That it was also the desire of the people the ensuing election gave instant proof.
EPILOGUE
To cast the mind back over the last twenty- five years is to survey changes such as no other quarter-century in our record can show. Never before has the nation faced such stupendous “varieties of untried being.” But in a season of startling breaches with the past one thing has been unbroken; one ancient institution has provided the cord on which mutations have been strung — a cord stretching back to our earliest annals. That cord, which has often been thin and sometimes frayed, is now a sevenfold cable. What has become of the solemn nineteenth-century flirtings with republicanism? The whole nation, the whole Empire, is royalist to-day, not only in constitutional doctrine but in personal affection.
One recent event was proof of this loyalty. In November 1928, at the Armistice Day celebrations, the King caught a chill which developed into a dangerous pleurisy. In December an operation followed, and at Christmastime a shadow hung over the Palace. The Prince of Wales was brought back in haste from Central Africa, a Council of State took over the royal duties, and the people waited anxiously for news, as if the sick man had been their closest kin. The treatment of the malady was a fine example of medical team-work, but the chief hope lay in the patient’s resolute courage. Early in the New Year the crisis was passed, and in February the King was able to leave London for the south coast. On April 22nd he issued a message to the Empire:
In looking back on my long illness and recovery, my heart is full of thankfulness of far deeper origin than any mere sense of relief.
I have been brought back from the danger and weariness of the past months by the wonderful skill and devotion of my doctors, surgeons and nurses. And help has come from another source of strength; as month after month went by I heard of the widespread and loving solicitude with which the Queen and I were surrounded. I was able to picture to myself the crowds of friends waiting and watching at my gates, and to think of the still great number of those who, in every part of the Empire, were remembering me with prayers and good wishes. The realisation of this has been among the most vivid experiences of my life.
It was an encouragement beyond description to find that my constant and earnest desire had been granted — the desire to gain the confidence and affection of my people. My thoughts have carried me even further than this. I cannot dwell upon the generous sympathy shown to me by unknown friends in many other countries without a new and moving hope. I long to believe it possible that experiences such as mine may soon appear no longer exceptional; when the national anxieties of all the peoples of the world shall be felt as a common source of human sympathy and a common claim on human friendship.
I am not yet able to bear the strain of a public ceremony, but I look forward on some appointed day to joining with my people at home and overseas in thanking Almighty God, not merely for my own recovery, but for the new evidences of the growing kindliness significant of the true nature of men and nations.
The Thanksgiving Service was held in Westminster Abbey on July 7th, but no ceremony could be more impressive than these simple words of the King. His illness had evoked a passion of loyal concern which was without a parallel. Science may discover some formula for the miracles which may be wrought, even in the physical sphere, by the concentrated will of great masses of men. Our ancestors, more piously and perhaps more wisely, would have attributed his recovery to the prayers of his people.
Majesty and Grace are in the royal office. Monarchy in some form is universal to-day, for it seems to be a necessity in government. Elsewhere it is elective and temporary, as in republics; or, as in dictatorships, enforced and undefined in term. But a hereditary monarchy is not only more enduring than such types, it has a special quality which they can never win. A king, who reigns not by election or by a sudden popular impulse but by right, has a sanction behind him which no transient dictator or president can claim. His authority is interwoven with the life and thought of his people. If, as in Britain, his ancestry goes back to our dim beginnings, the office embodies the whole history of the nation. Because it is beyond popular caprice, it is, as I have said, the centre of the nation’s conscious unity, a link between its past and its future. It becomes a symbol, which needs no artificial sanctity to give it power. With this firm foundation Britain is enabled to be a bold pioneer in new construction, just as the man who would cast his spear far must first find solid footing. It preserves her from the wastefulness of revolution, and from the futile type of revolution which we call reaction.
It has another supreme virtue. The essence of the British monarchy is that the King, while lifted far above the nation, should also be the nation itself in its most characteristic form. There is no place on our Throne for the superman, whether he be conqueror or dreamer; its occupant must be recognised by his subjects as of like nature with themselves, exalted indeed, but with the same outlook on life, the same traditions and tastes, the same staunch and familiar virtues. “The Englishman,” as Goldsmith wrote,
“is taught to love the King as his friend”; and friendship involves a noble equality. In the Platonic utopia the king was the philosopher; it is more important that he should be the plain man.
The office in itself is a great thing, but it may be made more potent by the personality of him who holds it. It is not for a subject, in Dr. Johnson’s famous words, to “bandy civilities with his Sovereign.” But the historian must record that the King has added to the duties of the Crown a graciousness which springs from his own character. He has given to ceremonial the bloom of friendliness. He has always possessed a high seriousness, and the note of faith and piety which he has often struck has not been the mere convention of his office. He has walked securely in more difficult constitutional paths than any of his immediate predecessors. He has faced courageously crises which imperilled both his people and his Throne. But, in addition to all this, he has diffused a spirit of simplicity and charity which has profoundly affected the national temper. His quick sympathy and kindliness have warmed the country, and done something to warm a chilly world. When nerve was breaking his steadfastness has restored it, and when strife was fermenting he has spoken the healing word. The power of the Throne lies in what it is: but the authority of the King lies both in what he is, and in what he has done. With the Queen and his family to aid him, he has made Britain not only a nation but a household.