The title of this book speaks for itself. I had attacked the problem of government. But it is important to notice that it was advice to 'the ruled' that was tendered, not to those who do the ruling. It was instruction for people in the gentle art of keeping the politician at bay. That was what would be called a 'Leftwing' book. I'm doing to-day just what I was doing in 1926, when I began. I am trying to save people from being 'ruled' too much—from being 'ruled' off the face of the earth, as a matter of fact. 1
Anyhow, in 1926 I began writing about politics, not because I like politics but everything was getting bogged in them and before you could do anything you had to deal with the politics with which it was encrusted. And I've got so bepoliticked myself in the process that in order to get at me, to-day, you have to get the politics off me first. That's one of the things I've tried to do in this book.—However, when politics came on the scene I ring down the curtain; and that was in 1926. That was when politics began for me in earnest. I've never had a moment's peace since.
I don't know how such a book as this ought to end : I feel inclined just to shut it down now. But I'm told, by people who seem to know, that I ought to drag in the present (Autumn 1937, time of writing). And I did, in my Introduction, rope in, in a desultory way, these latterdays.
The Zeitgeist, as I said three hundred pages back, is getting clear of the wash, or the undertow, kicked up by the Great War; we've got a new Zeitgeist, almost. It's almost as if a new guy had got into the landscape. I can hear him and smell him—there are new crepitations in the air, as yet unexplained. I believe he will be a great improvement, from my point of view, on the last one.
I picked up a newspaper just now to call to mind what was happening to us: I mean really big things. The usual triplets and 'doodles' bulked large. A Star called Taylor is mobbed by stenographers. 'Jim-and-Amy'—Jack Doyle and Mrs. Dodge-Godde: that is what bulks largest, the customary figures of our Free Press carnival. But I cut them out and concentrated on our Foreign Secretary at Geneva. Apologizing, I found him, about Great Britain's not being able to make war until 1942. A lot of small peoples would unfortunately have to put up with a lot more tiresomeness on the part of tyrants till then, it just couldn't be helped. It sounds as nonsensical as a 'doodle'. But it is a life-and-death doodle. It's big stuff—it's history. It's not just a child playing about, though you'd suppose it was at firet sight.
What I like about the new Zeitgeist is that he's stopped paying any attention to all that—to Anthony Eden and Jack Doyle, Broadribb and Hore Belisha. He's settling down to wait, like the rest of us. Since he can do nothing in spite of the fact that he's the Zeitgeist, to alter things, he is making himself at home in this long long 'pause' (to use Blum's word).—Nothing can happen till 1942, I suppose he argues. Then there'll be another Zeitgeist.
In my own particular field there's not a great deal doing— except for doodles. In painting and writing what might be called a doodledum obtains.
Among those who have become great public figures in the course of the last ten years, Mr. Auden heads the list. Is he the new guy who's got into the landscape. No: but he's got the technique of a new guy. I like what he does. He is all ice and woodenfaced acrobatics. Mr. Isherwood, his alter ego, is full of sly Dada fun, too. Both pander to the unuplifted, both flirt robustly with the underdog, but both come out of Dr. Freud's cabinet.
I am the most broadminded 'leftwinger' in England. If I have mentioned these Marxian playboys first, it is not out of bias for the rebellious mind. It is because the right-wing never 'creates', for some reason, in England. For impressive literary output, in Great Britain as in America, you must go to the Radical camp. France is quite different, of course. There the traditionalist is often a passably inventive fellow: there is no rule. But with us the Shaws, Huxleys, and Lawrences are all out for the rich man's blood, and I don't blame them.
This is not an accident, though. It is the historic attitude of the Anglo-Saxon. Also in England it is a domestic necessity: the rich man is so stupid here.—I of course, being an artist as well, have an acute personal dislike, even, for the British rich-man. It could not be otherwise. As to the rich-man's wars, you know what I think of them.
To body forth my optimism regarding the Zeitgeist 1937 is a little difficult. I cannot give him a name. If we turn to publicists and the sort of active men whose profession is letters, there are many hints of a change in which we could, I think, detect the presence of the Zeitgeist. There is an agreeable alteration in accent. Words fall with a more businesslike, a bleaker click.
There is a group of inkslinging clubmen : I don't know much about them, except that a number of them are papists: such names as Bryant, Hollis, Barnes, come to my mind. The very names are reassuring, and have a businesslike ring: this Hot, although mostly orthodox party-men and devoted to the interests of privilege and property, express themselves very well. They often state a dubious case with a laudable lack of humbug. (Humbug is of course the besetting sin of my radical friends—only Shaw escaped.)
England has no Hemingway, but if it had he would come out of a Club. A group of matter-of-fact reporters and lighthearted clubmen-journalists will do for us perhaps, someday, what the Middle-West did for the New World. The West End and the Middle-West stand for the same thing.—I just mention Hemingway to show you the sort of thing I am talking about. Every Anglo-Saxon community should have its Hemingway to disinfect it of its inveterate 'uplift', and provide a background of insensitiveness and alertness.—And then, of course, you need something else to dekiplingize you afterwards of your Hemingway!
Mr. Douglas Jerrold stands out from the hardboiled crowd : he is the brains of the Right. I think he is the Sotelo of English right-wingery. As the legitimate successor of Belloc and Chesterton he occupies a significant place in English letters, and brings with him also a brilliant narrative gift which should declare itself in successes in the theatre, if one could be found to put on a romantic tory farce. What I like about him is the dashing manner in which he throws his politics down, like jaunty ultimatums, and then turns his back. But like Mr. T. S. Eliot, his politics are French rather than English. He would possibly have flourished better in the land of the Action Frangaise or of the Accion Popular. And his co-religionist, Father D'Arcy, the extremely brilliant Master of Campion Hall, is a 'continental' figure, too, picturesque not only because a Jesuit. He happens to be one of the most characteristic heads in my portrait gallery (see illustration), as well.
Another portent—all by himself—is Mr. Malcolm Muggeridge. He is young and very very odd: for he is 'left-wing', as much as I am, and yet he is not silly. I rubbed my eyes when I first caught sight of Mr. Muggeridge. I really thought I was dreaming. I didn't think Mr. Muggeridge was real.
It is not, however, in any individual that you must look for the kind of thing I have been announcing, and which I think I have distinctly perceived. Look closely at the written word. It is rather the new smells and colours of the words men use you have to look out for—the gait of the sentences, the tone of the voice. (Didn't you know that words could smell? Read Mr. Joad!)
However, this is enough about a system of things, which, although joined to the Great War (the main subject of my book) by the 'post-war', is really a distinct division of Time, which it would require another book to describe properly.— The Great War is a magnet, the 'post-war' its magnetic field. It is my belief that we should try to neutralize it. We do not want to be drawn back into that. The 'post-war' is the link between to-day and the War. And the free movement of particles we can detect everywhere it present, again, is an extremely ecouraging sign. It looks almost as if the magnetism was getting weaker.
I ought to say something striking now that should epitomize all that you've been hearing about, since I first showed you a scowling Bombardier upon a distant parade ground at a Dorsetshire camp. Yet one can't epitomize oneself. An attempt to do so would only lead to one's appearing either too pleased with oneself or not pleased enough.
The many ex
ternal adventures which I have attempted faith* fully to set down are of no great importance, except In so far as they determine the actions of what is inside. For obviously my reason d'etre is inside. Everyone's raison d'etre is what he is best at. And my long suit is not action, in the ordinary sense.
I am not averse at moving about. The body moves about a good deal, in obedience to the laws of life, and I encourage it to do so. But as its business is to mark, learn and inwardly digest, and not to hit people in the eye, or poise itself upon the brink of precipices (I am very firm about that—I never let it go above 10,000 feet) its adventures are my adventures, not the other way round.
Still I hope I may have entertained you, here and there, for it is amazing the number of different sorts of things I have done. And I hope that, in addition to the entertainment—as my sight is keen, as nothing escapes my eye, and as I may claim a respectable measure of common sense, with which to interpret the 'bag' brought to me, daily, by this formidable eyesight—it may be that, in this amusing way by following my body round, as we have done, some portion of my experience may have passed over into you.
Blasting and Bomardiering Page 34