WHAT ENGLAND MEANS TO ME

Evening Star, Issue 23681, 14 September 1940, Page 3

WHAT ENGLAND MEANS TO ME

[By J. B. Priestley, in the ‘ Christian Science Monitor.’]

What is the value of British life and character to world civilisation? To answer this question 1 will look at Britain from outside and make the following bold generalisation about the world’s attitude toward her. The world’s fools admire Britain; its clever knaves scorn her; and its wise men love her. An explanation of these three different points of view will take us a long way toward understanding Britain’s peculiar character and worth.

The fools who admire Britain are usually rich fools. They see this country as the earthly paradise of the idle splendid rich, who have here their racing stables, their yachts, their grouse moors, their country houses, in which is discovered an ancient smooth tradition of pleasant time-killing existence. The second generation rich, nearly all over the world, have nearly always adopted English outward habits and tricks. They do not mind being regarded as Anglqphiles, though as a rule they know next to nothing about the English people or genuine English thought. They regard London as the most magnificent and satisfying of all capital cities, and Mayfair as the best fashionable quarter in the world. It is the existence of so many of these fea-ther-headed persons that has given English life a false appearance of luxury and decadence.

These Anglophiles produce the Anglophobes, and as these people have more intelligence and energy they have also far more influence. They see what we take very little trouble to hide, what indeed we almost flaunt, and that is the huge list of faults and weaknesses. They notice our people’s love of ease and distaste at normal times for hard work; our complacency, our snobbery, our lack of respect for intellect. In their eyes the huge Empire is always ready to fall to pieces. We seem to them sleepy, decayed, and altogether unworthy guardians of so vast a treasure house. That is nearly always the view of tho German, who is perpetually irritated by the thought that these slack but still arrogant islanders, whose grasp is obviously so loose, should command even yet more wealth, power, and respect than tlu< members of his own disciplined, industrious, and self-sacrificing Reich. Among these Anglophqbes are all the clever knaves who find it easy enough to outwit the nearest yawning British official, who is apparently more interested in his lawn tennis and his golf than in his work, and so soon develop a sharp contempt for Britain. Her day, they prophesy, is done. It does not occur to them, chiefly because they have that kind of cleverness which is too smart to learn anything profound, that such prophecies have been made before and with equal certainty by clever men who were suddenly dismayed to find the sleepy old lion transformed into a great roaring beast eager for a fight to a finish. (It is significant that Emerson pointed this out a hundred years dg There is an old joke hero about the periodical ‘ Punch.’ “ ‘ Punch ’ isn’t as good as it used to be. I J. unch never was.” In the same way Britain is not us good as it used to be, and Britain never was., But the worm s wise men love Britain. For example, T think it will generally be conceded that George Santayana, the Spanish philosopher who taught in America and has since settled in Rome, is a firstclass specimen of the international wise man. And nobody has written more eloquently and enthusiastically about the British character than he has: “He carries his English weather in his heart wherever he goes, and it becomes a cool spot in the desert, and a steady and sane oracle among all the deliriums of mankind. Never since the heroic days of Greece has the world bad such a sweet, just, boyish master. It will be a black day for tho human race when scientific blackguards, conspirators, churls, and fanatics manage to supplant him. . . .” (Incidentally, could there he a better description of the Nazis than “ scientific blackguards, conspirators, churls, and fanatics? ”) It would be easy, if we had space enough, to find 50 passages like this from the words of the wise about Britain. Now what is it about the British scene and character that calls forth such eulogies? Odette Keun once wrote that the Briton “ is so free, as an individual and as a nation, from envy, bitterness, and the sentiment of revenge, that on this score he appears to me, who has been endowed to the topmost degree with the true vindictive European soul, to belong already to the angelic hosts. . . .” There is irony in this praise, and yet it contains a profound truth. In many things British life is generations behind life elsewhere. But in other, and, to my mind, more important things, it is ahead of, at a higher stage of development than national life elsewhere. I do not mean by this that Britons as individuals are better than individuals in other countries, although I think their tolerance, kindness, fairness, and public spirit are hard to match. I mean that the British community is in many respects the most highly developed in the world, and that its {peculiar strength is of the utmost importance at this present hour. It lias long been observed with aston-. ishment that national crises—such as some gigantic conflict between Capital and Labour—that would mean anger and riot and bloodshed in any other country seem to pass off quite easily and peacefully in Britain. There is no store of savagery waiting to he let loose, as there is even in America. The reason for this may he found in some observations by the philosopher, John MaeMnrray, who has pointed out that the values upon which English society is based are religious. “. . . The governing values of English social life belong to the field of direct personal relationships.” That is why Communist theory, with its clear-cut antagonism, never has made much impression upon tho British workers, who are sensitive to the injustice of exploitation under which they live, but are equally sensitive to tho “ groat amount of goodwill and kindness that is to be found in their relations with those human beings who happen to he capitalists, often through no fault of their own.”

I think I have criticised life in Britain as often and as sharply as any contemporary writer. But, nevertheless, T have always felt strongly that that life could only be reformed, so to speak, on its own basis, that in its acceptance of and permeation by great moral, or ‘perhaps even religious, values, it was already at a higher stage of development than societies dominated by Fascist or Communist theories, that Britain, perhaps because it is small, ancient, and has known so much security, is the most advanced laboratory of political and civic experiment in the world. I do not believe that the United States, or any other democracy, has anything to gain from imitating Britain. These two great democracies cannot travel on exactly the same road. But I do hold that what is individual and unique in Britain is so precious .to

good men everywhere in the world that if Britain could no longer go her own way, if her ancient liberties were extinguished, it would ho as if a great light were put out, and men who had never set foot in this island Mould still fool that their own way to the good life M-cre now darker and more dangerous.