Ring in the New

by Phyllis Bentley

  ‘Mr Oldroyd,’ broke out Mellor, ‘I cannot bear to sit discussing harebells while all these awful things are going on in the world. Harebells don’t matter.’

  ‘The attitude of mind about accuracy matters.’

  ‘Pettifogging,’ cried Mellor.

  ‘Nothing is more falsifying, and only lack of goodwill is more damaging, in public relations than inaccuracy, whether about matters large or small. Using terms too large, too intense, too vehement for the matter in hand is a very dangerous form of falsification. One should endeavour to write and to speak with rational moderation to express the exact truth.’

  ‘We shouldn’t get anywhere by being moderate.’

  ‘Where do you want to get, Mr Mellor?’

  ‘We want a revolution!’

  ‘A revolution by force?’

  ‘If necessary.’

  ‘For myself, I regard revolution as a last resort, to be engaged upon only when all other methods have failed.’

  ‘That’s pusillanimous,’ said Mellor hotly. ‘Why hesitate to try the only method which is effective?’

  ‘But at such a human cost. When I think of revolution I always think of Zhivago Walking along the side of a ripe cornfield. The field rustles, and he perceives that it is infested by thousands of rats.’

  ‘A cornfield——’

  ‘Human food.’

  ‘Mr Oldroyd, excuse me, I don’t wish to be rude, but you seem to me to be what my father calls a peace-at-any-pricer.’

  ‘I hope not,’ said Jonathan colouring. ‘Though I believed peace at any price was one of your tenets.’

  ‘Are you satisfied with the state of the world at present?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘What do you think we should do about it, then?’

  ‘The first thing that is required is thought. Careful, conscientious, informed—and of course, full of goodwill. Because of the immense population of the earth, and old animosities which still survive, our problems are difficult and confusing. We should think about them. Are you familiar with Hardy’s The Dynasts, Mr Mellor?’

  ‘No. We haven’t got to Hardy yet,’ said Mellor youthfully.

  ‘There is a very famous passage of poetry in the Over-world there, a Chorus of the Pities in which they plead for a more excellent way of life. It begins like this: We would establish those of kindlier build, In fair Compassions skilled, Men of deep art in life-development, Watchers and warders of thy varied lands. You notice these watchers and warders are skilled and have deep art.’

  ‘You only think in quotations,’ threw out Mellor hotly, and he banged out of the room.

  The next time Mellor attended to have an essay returned—the course had now ‘reached’, in his phrase, George Eliot, and the ethics of Middlemarch had given the young man ample scope for attack on provincial society—he enquired of Jonathan what he thought of the ten commandments.

  That’s a very large question, Mr Mellor,’ said Jonathan, laughing.

  ‘No, but seriously, Mr Oldroyd, do you think they’re adequate moral guides for the twentieth century?’

  ‘They’ve worked pretty well for nearly two thousand years.’

  ‘But have they? Why should we be tied down by these awful prohibitions? Generation after generation, we go on having no fun. Why can’t we do as we like?’

  ‘Because other people also want to do as they like, and there must be some rule to limit our mutual intrusions on each other’s rights.’

  ‘Primitive peoples get on all right without rules.’

  ‘On the contrary they’re limited in every direction by taboos and tribal traditions. Civilisation is surely the liberating of the human spirit.’

  ‘I don’t feel very liberated. Anyway, I don’t think the Mosaic commandments fit modern times. The first, for instance, telling us to love God with all our hearts. If we don’t believe there is a God, where’s the point?’

  ‘You love good, however?’

  ‘Then there’s all that about honouring your parents,’ continued Mellor, evading this question. ‘Nobody wants to do that nowadays, and Freud tells us why. As for the tenth, it’s fine capitalist propaganda.’

  ‘I think it is the seventh which really vexes you,’ said Jonathan drily.

  ‘Why not? Why can’t we enjoy sex while we’re young?’

  ‘Mr Mellor, it might be useful to you to compile a list of ten commandments which in your belief, are adapted to twentieth-century conditions—but pray do it in the vacation, not in term,’ said Jonathan, laughing again. ‘Meanwhile, please note that George Eliot was quite as alive as you are to the stultifying inhibitions of provincial life.’

  A week or so later, at the close of a tutorial, Mellor hung back as the others left the room, With him were the stammerer and the girl in black network stockings. They all looked very serious, and Jonathan felt affectionately towards them.

  ‘Mr Oldroyd,’ began Mellor, ‘could we have a word with you?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘What is your opinion of the value of student demonstrations in influencing public opinion?’

  ‘A serious, silent demonstration would, I believe, have a considerable effect,’ said Jonathan. ‘But noisy catcalls and rioting, hustling, paper darts and the like, such as we saw in the Hall last night have an adverse effect. They look too much like a student rag, youthful and irresponsible. Also when you see them reproduced on the television screen, as of course nowadays we all do, it can be seen that the students are laughing, either from mob hysteria or, what is almost worse, because they are enjoying the disorder they create.’

  ‘B-b-but do you agree with the sp-p-p-eaker last night?’ said the stammerer.

  ‘I disagree with him with all my heart,’ said Jonathan, speaking with passion.

  The three pairs of eyes fixed anxiously upon him took on an expression of relief.

  ‘Then surely we are entitled to express our disapproval of him,’ said the girl.

  ‘Certainly. But in this country, free speech is the rule. He must be allowed to express his views, provided they are not incitements to hatred or disorder.’

  ‘I don’t see why we should keep the rule if we don’t want to,’ said the girl. ‘We can judge for ourselves what to do.’

  ‘The only true way to judge an action,’ said Jonathan earnestly, ‘is to turn it the other way round.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The speaker last night expressed right-wing views—’

  ‘P-p-p-practically f-f-fascist,’ said the stammerer.

  ‘—and you as left-wing believers, howled him down, and would have pushed him about if police hadn’t prevented it. Now suppose the speaker had been left-wing, and right-wing students had howled him down and pushed him about. What would you have thought of that? Brutal interference? Illiberal oppression? Well? Tell me!’

  ‘I think that’s a cissy idea,’ said the girl with decision.

  ‘It works though,’ argued Jonathan. ‘Murder and cruelty and lying always look wrong, whoever commits them.’

  ‘Then what are we to do to show disapproval?’ said Mellor. ‘We can’t just stand back and let these ideas grow.’

  ‘The best thing is to stay away from the meeting. But if you go, listen quietly, and at the end of the speech remain absolutely silent. Believe me, silence is far more crushing to a speaker, than any amount of noisy comment.’

  ‘I don’t agree,’ said the girl quickly.

  ‘Well’ you haven’t tried it.’

  There was a pause. ‘Was there any other point you wished to discuss?’ said Jonathan mildly.

  The trio looked at each other.

  ‘We’re going to London,’ said the girl at length. ‘On Sunday.’

  Jonathan, imagining that some question of Monday leave, over which he had no control, was involved, felt slightly puzzled, and was silent.

  ‘To join the students’ protest march,’ said Mellor.

  ‘We’ve hired a c-c-coach,’ said the stammerer
eagerly.

  ‘Will you come with us?’ blurted Mellor.

  ‘Of c-c-course we shall have to charge c-c-coach f-f-fare,’ said the stammerer.

  ‘Will you come with us?’ repeated Mellor harshly.

  ‘If I do,’ said Jonathan after a pause, ‘my influence will be directed entirely against any kind of violence.’

  ‘That’s what we want, isn’t it, Peter? Isn’t it, Dave?’ said the girl.

  The stammerer nodded. Mellor fixed his dark eyes, now burning with passion, on Jonathan’s face.

  ‘Will you come with us?’ he said again, ‘or do you prefer to speak not when the people listen?’ He paused and added with contempt ‘Easy live and quiet die.’

  Under this taunt, the more bitter because it was a quotation such as Mellor had taunted him with using, Jonathan coloured.

  9

  Demonstration

  It was just before five o’clock on a cold October morning when Jonathan, having parked his car in the University car park, approached one of the large coaches which stood at the main Lorimer entrance. The coach lights looked cheerful in the autumn dark, and the hum of excited chatter round its door brightened his spirits. Some thirty, which grew to forty, young men and girls were clustered there, all of course hatless, most wearing long University scarves, and all clad in the anoraks and jeans which were the fashion of the time, or as near to these as their resources could afford. They all looked shabby, but as Jonathan had donned his oldest clothes himself he understood this; one did not attend a Demonstration, where one was exposed inevitably and shelterless to weather, sleeping in one’s clothes, outdoor picnic snatches of food, and possibly shoving and pushing on a grand scale, in any garments whose preservation one valued.

  Banners—bed sheets or stiff paper, wound at each end round poles which were probably broom handles—were’ now brought, unrolled and laid on the ground for inspection. They were inscribed with such phrases as U.S.A. OUT, LEAVE VIETNAM ALONE, THE SYSTEM IS ROTTEN, OUT OUT, and other such slogans. The printing, though large and legible, was so messy, uneven and altogether graceless, that Jonathan could not forbear a criticism.

  ‘Haven’t you any artists among you, to paint better banners? These are so hideous.’

  ‘If we had better banners, the authorities would say they were supplied to us,’ said Mellor angrily.

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘How should I know? We make these ourselves. We can’t afford to buy them.’

  ‘That wasn’t my point,’ began Jonathan, but his remark was lost in a sudden surge towards the coach door.

  He had long since learned that leading must be done from the front, and that anyone who wished to exert influence must sit in front where his pupils could see him, and not at the back where he could see them. Not wishing to assert authority too obtrusively, he sank into the second seat from the front; Mellor and the stammerer were ahead, Mellor’s girl, whose name it appeared was Alice Smith, seated herself beside Jonathan. He perceived that as the demonstrators entered, many of them gazed at him askance; he expected this and bore their glances cheerfully, but was not pleased when Mellor, after a moment’s hesitation, rose and went down the coach and embarked on brief whispered conversations with some of the students, glancing from time to time in his direction. He deduced that Mellor’s invitation to him was a tactic designed to respectabilise their participation in the eyes of the Lorimer authorities. After a brief resentment he decided that, very well, respectabilise it he would.

  One or two latecomers came rushing breathless to the coach, which now appeared practically full, though in the confusion of people standing, changing seats, leaning over to talk and laying the rolled banners down on the aisle floor, it was not possible to discern the fact exactly. The driver, looking at his watch, expressed anxiety to Mellor, who rose and in his admirably resonant voice cried out:

  ‘Sit down! Sit down! I want to count you!’

  This was achieved; two seats were seen to remain empty.

  Mellor rose, and stretching his arms across the doorway to prevent himself from falling, leaned out and cried loudly:

  ‘Any more for the Demo?’

  Laughter greeted this from the coach.

  ‘Shut up a minute!’ shouted Mellor, turning to them. When silence fell, he leaned out again and repeated his cry.

  No response coming, he withdrew into the coach and slid the door home.

  ‘That’s all, I guess,’ he said.

  The driver nodded and started his engine. A loud cheer came from the students as the coach rolled off.

  ‘Quite a good turn-up,’ said Alice to Jonathan.

  ‘Yes, indeed. What time are we due in London?’

  ‘Between twelve and one. We shall pause just outside London and eat our food in the coach.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Jonathan, ruefully conscious that he had not brought any food with him.

  ‘We’re due at Charing Cross at two.’

  ‘You have it all well organised.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Alice haughtily.

  ‘Would you care to sit by the window, Miss Smith?’ said Jonathan, making to rise.

  Alice looked at him in astonishment, and said ‘No.’

  A loud outburst of eager chatter now arose, in which the word revolution figured so often that Jonathan began to feel soberly distressed. Mellor turning round and glimpsing the expression of his face, said sharply:

  ‘Of course if you come with us you must expect to hear what we think.’

  ‘I shall be very glad to hear your views and learn your grievances,’ said Jonathan.

  ‘It’s gone far beyond student grievances,’ said Mellor eagerly. ‘Though of course we have plenty of those.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Lack of participation in the organisation of the University, and the curriculum. Well, the one springs from the other, really.’

  ‘I can understand and approve your desire for more participation, but I think professors who have devoted their whole lives to the study of a subject, know more about it than you do.’

  ‘But it’s their view of a subject they teach. Students are taught bourgeois history, bourgeois economics,’ said Mellor, rising in his eager passion.

  ‘And you want to be taught your kind of history and economics?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Jonathan smiled rather sadly, and Mellor said with anger, ‘You’re taught to conform.’

  ‘And you want to teach conformity to another system?’

  ‘We want to be free to choose.’

  ‘Yes, freedom to choose and change!’ broke in a student from across the aisle. ‘That we’ve never had.’

  ‘You are just reaching voting age, which will give you that freedom,’ said Jonathan.

  By this time this conversation had become the object of general attention, and members of the coach began to join in from all sides.

  ‘We want to give people control over their own lives!’ shouted one from the rear.

  ‘Yes. How passionately one longs for that in one’s youth,’ agreed Jonathan, remembering his own longing not to go into textiles. ‘Great decisions one is entitled to make for oneself. In smaller matters, we always have to yield some of our desires to give room for those of other people, who also yeild a little. It is the price we pay for living in communities. If we are to live amicably together we cannot have all our own way.’

  ‘But why should we give in to arbitrary authority?’ cried Mellor.

  ‘Some use of authority is necessary, if chaos is to be avoided,’ said Jonathan, ‘You yourself, Mr Mellor, used authority just now.’

  ‘I did not!’ shouted Mellor, crimsoning.

  ‘You told the students here to sit down and shut up-very wisely in my opinion,’ said Jonathan.

  There was some laughter and ribald comment at this, and Mellor wishing, Jonathan thought, to restore his dominance, repeated very seriously:

  ‘It’s gone far beyond student grievances. Vietnam has provided a focu
s, a rallying point, a symbol. To smash the system at one point, we find we have to smash it at every point. The hierarchical structure is intolerable. We must continue our agitation until the entire present power structure has been destroyed.’

  ‘What will you put in its place?’ asked Jonathan. As Mellor exclaimed angrily, he went on: ‘No— I am speaking seriously. I really wish to know.’

  ‘Forms of revolutionary socialism,’ said Mellor, his eye glowing with enthusiasm.

  ‘How will those differ from the present Welfare State?’

  Mellor hesitated.

  ‘We’ve been deprived of any revolutionary language in which to express what we feel.’ he said at length.

  ‘I haven’t noticed any lack of expression,’ murmured Jonathan.

  He spoke quietly, because he saw that Mellor’s ardent and idealistic, but turbulent and inchoate thought was indeed still struggling for form, and he felt a compunction about pressing his advantage.

  Mellor turned and sat down abruptly.

  The argument died. The stammerer, prompted perhaps by Mellor, took advantage of the hush to go round the coach collecting fares. Daylight came, the coach lights were put out, the Midlands rolled by, flat, agricultural, interminable. Jonathan, observing that some of his young colleagues had already fallen to sleep, put back his head and attempted to do likewise. In fact he slept better than he had done for some time, for the pressing interest of his situation excluded the thoughts of his wife and children which usually so greatly troubled his repose.

  They all awoke when the coach drew up in the park of one of those wayside cafés which the popular habit of touring has created. Rather cross at being thus jerked from sleep, the students stumbled out in a sullen silence, but after cups of tea and coffee revived. The occasion became jovial and noisy, and when they rejoined the coach songs were sung, by no means either unmelodious or inexpressive. Jonathan reflected that while the most respectable and middle-aged persons enjoyed the Marseillaise, the revolution which it celebrated being safely over, many of them would shudder at a song with a mournful cadence, each verse of which ended In the fields of Vietnam.