The Die-Hard's Dilemma BOOKS OF THE DAY
By E. H. CARR
Mu. WYNDHAM LEWIS is a whale of a publicist. It is therefore small wonder that he is ill at ease in the muddy little duck-pond of international. affairs and that, when he lashes out with his tail, the minnows scatter in all directions. It is small wonder too that he finds it difficult to distinguish between the minnows, that he thinks Mr. Baldwin and Sir Walter Citrine interchangeable, •and can see nothing between .The Spectator and one of its more radical weekly eontemporaries but " a dead level of liberal-pink orthodoxy." The whale cannot be expected to have an eye for these finer gradations among.different categories of minnow. Mr. Lewis honestly does his best. . He even apologises in one place to the reader for feeding him with " facts requiring more time than I can give him for assimilation." Graciousness from a whale can, one feels, go no further.
. It is not surprising that, in the embarrassing position in which he finds himself, Mr. Lewis's snortings and lashings should become a little incoherent. You will quickly perceive that he is indignant ; for the noise is, almost deafening. There is no mystery about the. objects of his indignation ; for he is indignant with nearly everybody from Miss Ellen Wilkinson to Mr. Churchill and from Mr. Eden to Mr. A. P. Herbert. But the question what, if anything, he is driving at is more difficult to answer. Facit indignatio versum, but what next ? What is Mr.. Lewis's philosophy, parts of which, as he assures us in his preface. he shares with Lady Houston,: Mr. Maxton, Sir Stafford Cripps and Sir Oswald Mosley :e By way of relief from Mr. Lewis's own flights of rhetoric, I will try to analyse it as prosily as I can.
Once upon a time there was a Good Die-Hard. Being a British Die-Hard, he was a stout conservative ; for the British Die-Hard, unlike Die-Hardy of some other brands, is so satisfied with what he has already got that he cannot imagine any change which could possibly be worth dying-- or even stirring from his arm-chair—for. He hated Demo- cracy, and the League of Nations, and the Huns, and coloured men and Bolsheviks. He loved Dictatorships, and Signor Mussolini, and (if he had ever heard of Poland) Marshal Pilsudski, and France ; for France, though regrettably republican, was unimpeachably conservative and, though deplorably weak about coloured men, hated Huns and Bolsheviks as much as he did, and would have nothing to do with all this nonsense about disarmament. He stoutly continued, from 1922 to 1933, to propound these views in the columns of the Morning Post or in other choirs. and places where Good British Die-Hands sing together in unison.
But in 1933 something dreadffil happened--something so dreadful that the Good Die-Hard was obliged, foi the first time for fifteen years, to think for himself—or at any rate to get somebody to do a spot of thinking for him. There was a revolution in Germany ; and Germany acquired that envy of all true Die-flitrds—la Dictatorship. Worse still, Germany came to the true way of thinking about coloured men, even including in that category (the Good British Die-Hard would not have gone so far himself, but it showed the right spirit) the Jews. Worst of all, Germany shook off the dust of Geneva from her feet, denounced the League of Nations in purest Die-Hardese, and attacked disarmament in the most practical of all ways by rearming and conscripting her population. In other words Germany, which had for so long been merely a territory inhabited by Hum, now suddenly became a White Man's Paradise, a land fit for Die-Bards to live ht, and was helping manfully to make the world safe for
Left Wings over Europe: or How to make a War about Nothing By Wyndham Lewis. (Cape. 7s. 6d.) Dictatorship. It way all ery bewildering to the Gaol British Die-Hard. who did not like changing either his arm- chair or his opinions.
Nor have the years since 1933 done anything to save him from the dreadful fate of having to think for himself.
Monsieur Litvinov floated to Geneva on the stream of n.
Franco _Soviet alliance. Love me, love my dog ; and the Good Die-Hard seemed now to be faced with the choice of embracing the Bolsheviks or ceasing to embrace the French.
Moreover, things were seriously complicated by the apparently final and irreparable quarrel between Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini about Austria. Wheel dictators fell out, and the most conservative country ill Europe takes Monsieur Litvinov to its arms, what can a poor British Die-Hard do with his divided loyalties ?
This somewhat tedious analysis of the Die-Hunt's dilemma is necessary to the understanding of Mr. Lewis's convulsive tail-lashings. Stirred from his comfortable arm-chair, the Good British Die-Hard (who was once Mr. Lewis's Fairy Godfather) has shuffled off after Mr. Churchill and the will.
o'-the-wisp of collective security, leaving Mr. Lewis, alone like Casabianca, to defend the " Black Principle " against the " Red Menace." So much does the modern Die-Hard (Mr. Lewis always excepted) detest the Hun that he is prepared to embrace what Mr. Churchill used to call the " bloody baboonery " of Bolshevism and bless an alliance.
in Mr. Lewis's words, " between the Scarlet Woman of Moscow and the smug l'ickwicks (or must we say Pecksniffs?) of the western world." So much does Mr. Churchill hate Herr Hitler that he is even prepared. in a spirit of solidarity, to hate Signor Mussolini and to hamper him in his efforts to fulfil the White Man's mission to the coloured races. And knowing his Die-Hards, Mr. Lewis is genuinely frightened that they (and not the comparatively harmless Mr. Baldwin) will land this country in " the war about nothing." of which he speaks in his sub-title, at the nefarious dictation of Geneva and Moscow.
It will be seen that Mr. Lewis is concerned, when indigew- lion does not choke his utterance altogether, with the two most vital problems of British foreign policy at the present time ; the feasibility of keeping the peace by a system of collective sanctions, and the possibility of coming to teens with Herr Hitler. He writes in what is politely termed a provocative style, and may suggest fresh trains of II ght to readers in search of light on these problems. But they will be under little temptation to accept his views as they stand ; and it is to be hoped that they will be equally cautious in their attitude to his facts. It was not, on any long-term view, " England who effected the exodus of Germany from the League." It is certainly not true that the " Bankers' Olympus " wants war with Germany. The events of the last.
year seem to have disposed of the rather antiquated charge that " English democracy " is exclusively interested in " the problem of bread-and-butter, procreation, crimes of violence and ball-games." Finally, what shall we say of the state- ment that the Italian campaign in Abyssinia was " not a sanguinary and merciless war like, say, the Boer l'%'ar," but that " the well-known bloodthirsty propensities of the Abyssinians were bound in the end to turn this exhibition of engineering skill on the part of the peaceable Italian invaders ' into a most unsuitable brawl " ? Evidently Mr. Lewis in his lighter moments is not above the gentle art of pulling our leg. It will be the reader's own fault if he does not get. plenty of amusement out of Left Wings (het Europe, as well as some instruction.
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