A GINGERER !
Rude Letters to Youth, from Bill Back-Bench, M. P. (Pearson. 2S. 6d.) " FOG in the channel. Continent isolated." The announcement which recently headed a paragraph in a leading English news- paper might be taken as the text of the Bill Back-Bench letters, so admirably does it epitomise the parochialism of their author, a ;parochialism which, while equating the happy accident of being born into the same community as Bill Back-Bench with virtue, and disagreement with Bill Back-Bench with sin, does both with a naiveté which endears the author no less than it delights the reader.
In a concluding letter addressed to those who have read the other letters Bill Back-Bench defines the British Faith as Patriotism and Pride of Empire, and Patriotism and Pride of Empire as embodying (I) security for our island kingdom ; (2) security for the Empire; (3) employment of the weight of the Empire in the cause of peace; (4) the "freedom of the Christian religion." " No other country in the world," he avers in italics, can "offer to its young people ideals comparable with these." But let us make the sacrilegious supposition that Bill Back- Bench had been born in a bedroom a few hundred miles to the eastward ; it 'is difficult to believe that an entirely different set of ideals would not have seemed to him equally admirable, and that a difference in longitude of a few thousand miles would not have made him an equally doughty champion of " the freedom " of the Mahommedan or the Hindu or the Buddhist or of whatever may have happened to be the religion of the locality.
When the Oxford Union passes a resolution of which he disapproves, it automatically becomes the obscure haunt of those who are themselves obscure," while those who respond to his challenge to be strong to defend England with the sullen question, " What have I to defend ? " are told that " they might, with advantage, have been drowned at birth." The possibility that this regrettable failure to have anything to defend may be due to no fault on the part of the property-less is admitted, but, since so many of us " slope about with a discontented look, a bored voice and a perpetual cigarette stuck in the side of our faces " expecting the State to do every- thing for us, yet being ourselves prepared to do nothing for the State, is not taken very seriously. Upon incorrigible and blameless unemployment Bill Back-Bench's comment is that it is " a weakness which must be eradicated from our British scheme of things." It must .indeed.
For the rest, we must build up our defences, because, if we are strong enough, no enemy will attack us. It is not clear whether this is the advice which Bill Back-Bench, M.P., would give to Germany. I rather think that it is, for, as I read the letters on pacifism, defence and foreign policy I seem to catch again the accents of my aunt assuring me in classic utterance that " we must build our fleet up to what they said they'd build theirs up to, if we built ours up." The conclusion seems to be that the only way in which peace can be assured to the world is for every nation to be so much stronger than every other that no nation dare attack another. But in drawing this conclusion I perceive that I have fallen into error, for I am looking at the problem of peace and war from the point of view of other nations, or rather from that of all nations, and, in doing so, am offending against all the canons of Bill Back- Bench's thought. Does he not warn me time and again against any departure from the strictly British point of view as a " sloppy internationalism " ? When, in fact, there is fog in the channel, it is the Continent that is isolated.
Isolated, but not unvisited. From the Palace Hotel, Wengen, from the St. George's Hotel, Wellington, New Zealand, from the Grand Hotel de Russie at Geneva, from the HOtel de l'Europe at Warsaw, from the Hotel Royal Daniell at Venice, from the middle of the Atlantic, Bill Back-Bench writes his letters to young men and women, to teachers and house-painters and curates and others, on Pacificism and Bodies and Bloody Revolution and Communism and Isms in general and Warts. The object of the letters is to encourage physical fitness, patriotism, discipline and a sense of responsibility in the young, and the proceeds of their sale will go to the National Playing Fields Association. It is possible to respect their author ; it is even possible to agree with him—on warts for instance, young men who " dashing about in high-powered cars between their flats and week-end cottages sometimes make me feel almost Communistic "—it is possible to question him—is it really true, for example, that " in Germany and Italy great progress has been made in improving factory conditions and environ- ment," or that Great Britain, which has never in any single year, since winning " the war to end war," spent less than £ros millions in preparation for the next, been " wallowing luxuriously in billows of pacifism "; or should he not in justice mention that the abortions which he deplores in Russia have now been declared illegal ?—but it is not possible to argue with him, just as the Continent cannot argue with Britain, whether the Continent or Britain has been isolated.
It is, however, impossible to deny oneself the pleasure of asking him, as he moves about Europe from one comfortable and expensive hotel to another, who or what he is that he should presume to lecture those who have not been so blessed by fortune as himself, who cannot go to Europe, who have a fortnight's holiday or none at all, and who can afford nothing better than lodgings in a back street at Blackpool, how they should behave, what they should believe, how they should spend their time and leisure, and what they should value. He is honest and sincere, he hates cant, and he believes, or thinks he believes, in liberty ; but it is difficult to see him in any other light than in that of some heavy body lying weightily on a sofa whose springs are showing signs of sagging, and devoting all its energies to persuading the sofa of the importance in everybody's interest of remaining well sprung.
C. E. M. Joni).
Previous page
