WHAT ENGLAND MEANS TO ME

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21224, 21 September 1940, Page 11

WHAT ENGLAND MEANS TO ME

(J. B. Priestly in American newspaper.)

■yyHAT IS THE VALUE of British life and character to world civilisation ? To answer this question I 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 Anglophiles, 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 feather-headed persons that has mven English life a false appearance of luxury and decadence. Faults and Weaknesses 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 eves the huge Fmpire is always ready to fall to pieces. We seem to them sleepy, decayed, and altogether unworthv guardians of so vast a treasure house. That is nearly always the view of the 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 the members of his own disciplined, industrious and self-sacrificing Reich. Among these Anglonhobes 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 f'-• Britain. Her day, they prophesy, is done. It does not occur to them, chiefly because thev 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 dismaved 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 ago). Wise Men Love Britain There is an old joke here about the periodical Punch. “ Punch isn’t as good as it used to be. Punch never was.” In the same way. Britain is not as good as it •'sed to be. and Britain never was. But the world’s wise men love Britain. For example. I think it will generally be conooHed that George Santayana, the Spanish nhilosopher who taught in America and has since settled in Rome, is a first-class specimen of the international wise man. And nobody has written more cloouently ~nd enthusiastically about the British obaracter 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 oracl° among all the deliriums of mankind. Never since the heroic days of

Political and Civic Laboratory

Greece has the world had such a sweet, just, boyish master. It will be a black day for the human race when scientific blackguards, conspirators, churls and fanatics manage to supplant him. . . .” (Incidentally, could there be 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 ? Higher State of Development 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 has long been observed with astonishment 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 nass off quite easily and peacefully in Britain. There is no store of savagery waiting to be let loose, as there is even in America. The reason for this may be found in some observations by the philosopher. John Mac Murray, who has pointed out that the values unon 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 the British workers, who are sensitive to the injustice of exnloitation under which thev live, but are equally sensitive to the “great amount of goodwill and kindness that is to be found in their relations with those human beings who happen to be capitalists, often through no fault of their own.” Moral and Religious Values I think I have criticised life in Britain as often and as sharply as any contemporary writer. But nevertheless I have always felt strongly that that life could onlv 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 bv 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, lias 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 wore extinguished, it would be as if a great light were put out, and men who had never set foot in this island would still feel that their own way to the good life were now darker and more dangerous.