CHEERS FOR A FAITH
'UP-HILL ALL THE WAY, A Third Cheer for Democracy, by Mary Agnes Hamilton; Jonathan Cape, English price 12/6. "HIS is the autobiography of a woman _ who has long been known’ through her novels and biographies, as well as ‘her work in politics. Mary Hamilton is iti ye f
the daughter of a Glasgow professor. She went to Cambridge, was a pacifist in the first war but was heart and soul in the second, fought several elections for Labour, and held a parliamentary under-secretaryship, has worked with Americans and yisited America, and has had lengthy and varied experience as a civil servant. From all this and more she draws material for a probing and honest chronicle, and towards no one is she more honest than herself. About public men, of whom we meet many, she writes shrewdly and fairly. She gives Ramsay MacDonald full marks for keeping Communism out of the British Labour Party after the first war, but on his faults of disposition she is devastating. The searching comments on the Left are written by one who is, presumably, still a member of the Labour Party. She notes the intellectual woolliness among ‘her associates of the old Independent Labour Party, who "had never thought about production," and were liable to develop "a perilous sense of moral superiority." Some persons, she says, become Communists from a sense of guilt in belonging to the bourgeoisie, but she herself regards the middle class as "nearer than any other to living the civilised life that could be made available to all." I would like to shake hands with her on her exposure of the cant about the "bourgeoisie." The title of her chapter on the shock caused by
Russia’s betrayal of the West is signi-ficant-"The Insane Root." Against despairers in life and letters she advances the ideal of thinking "nobly of the soul." So she calls for not two cheers for democracy, as a famous contemporary novelist has proposed, but three. I rise to ask for a similar compliment to
this heartening book.
A.
M.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 787, 20 August 1954, Page 14
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345CHEERS FOR A FAITH New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 787, 20 August 1954, Page 14
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