A WARNING TO EUROPE
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. The most suitably length is that of one of 00 " News of the Week " paragraphs. Signed letters are given a preference over those bearing a pseudonym, and the latter must be accompanied by the name and address of the author, which will be treated as confidential.—Ed. THE SPECTATOR.] [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Herr Mann's article, " A Warning to Europe," deals with principles, and so it shall be answered. Herr Mann fails to distinguish between the various shapes of the youth move- ment today. He sees in all of them this " dianysiac ecstasy of escape from self," masquerading under forms of the " State " and " Socialism." There is such an immense difference be- tween the National Socialism of Germany and socialism as it exists in Russia, that the former cannot be called a youth movement at all, being as it is only the old order defensive. A youth movement looks to the future ; it is an effort to revitalise the world. It is not essentially a matter of age but of spirit. In socialism progressive men of all ages are united ; its most specifically youthful aspect is that it will give young men a life worth living.
Herr Mann makes hard gibes against what is the most hopeful sign in a world full of the chaos bequeathed by a century of Buddenbrooks and Guermantes. This " group ecstasy " does indeed exist, and we should be thankful that it does. It is a great joy of finding again a brotherhood with others in working together. Dionysiac is the very worst word to describe it. It is no escapist self-indulgence, no luxurious madness ; it means self-sacrifice, intense hard work, constant belief in all that is best in man to guard against subtle enervating attacks such as Herr Mann's. Socialism such as we see it in Russia, and rising throughout Europe, is a cool-headed, planned, working organisation to defeat the forces of war, poverty, misery, and utter frustration that the world staggers under. Would Herr Mann deny that unity is strength ? Would he deny that we need strength today ?
Herr Mann believes in the " I " and its burdens. No form of society can hope to escape the problems besetting the indi- vidual, and who would not agree with Herr Mann that much of the exertion of living comes from them ? What a socialist world seeks to escape from is the exaggerated nervous state of the " I "—(so marked in Russia before 1917—becoming very marked elsewhere today)—the useless introspection that sprang from adjustment between the sensitive individual and the state of society, the self-questioning (self-weakening) and exaggeration of self that has found literary expression in the tradition of Rousseau and Amiel.
Youth laughs at the cultivated, he says. This is a most unfounded charge. What socialist youth finds wrong is the aesthetic culture that has no roots in life, the culture of the upper class that can tolerate evil and immense misery while it goes on with its dishonest problems of personal life lived to oneself, ignorant of the causes that are making that life unten- able. Socialism would found a greater humanism upon science and progress,. a culture that has the best of tradition in it, that has surer, more honest harmonies of spirit. Socialism believes that each man can become a creator—an anonymous creator (which is a great thing)—of the world in which he lives. It would hope to see' a sense of social culture that has not existed since the Greeks—but for which the time is. now ripe.
One or two small points. Herr Mann deplores an " escape from reason," like Baldwin in 1935 saying. " that at times I feel I am living in a madhouse." The Socialist solution of this chaos is to plan a world founded on reason. Since Marx's day socialism has become a science—in which knowledge and judgement are essential. It requires most balanced, brave, and capable organisers. There is no room for the irresponsible youth elements which Herr Mann sees everywhere at work. " Freedom " Herr Mann sighs for. There has been a new understanding of freedom since Marx defined it as " the know- ledge of necessity." Even Tolstoy has shown in hundreds of pages that his freedom is not in the individual's control.
There is a reference to Ibsen. Admittedly in all the trouble and need foe action today, the 'peace of mind and power of aesthetic concentration that is 'necessary to enjoy Ibsen's social dramas to the full is absent. But it will come later when there
is less stress.. However set a working-class audience before Peer Gynt or Brand and there will be immediate understanding, even as before Faitst or Prometheus Bound or Hamlet. Herr Mann should remember that it was Ibsen, speaking in 1885, who said : " The reshaping of social conditions which is now under way out there in Europe is chiefly concerne4 with the future position of the working man and of woman."
" No wonder the masses understand violence," says Herr Mann at the end of his article. It has been practised on them for so long that indeed they are beginning to know it. They want to understand it, why it is that violence represses them in their efforts to live better, why it is that they are forced to fight in terrible wars from which they get not one scrap of good. The outrage of 1914-18, and the new threat today, has proved that we must lead them to a better world. The cry today is for leaders so that Europe may avoid the cruelty and barbarism that comes in times of change.
One of the largest problems that Herr Mann's article raises is that of the relationship between the writer and politics. Herr Mann is a writer of great intellect and sensibility. His present article might have come from that intoxicating ferment of ideas that passes between Naphta and Settembrini in The Magic Mountain, ideas that were ideas for their own 'sake. Herr Mann has always considered himself as a bourgeois who has drifted into literature, and his Warning to Europe expresses the attempt of that class to stand aside, to be ironical, to be blind. His views must isolate him from all that will make writing worth while. The time for irony has gone. Now there are concrete grounds for hope. Romain Rolland and Andre Gide (whatever stir his recent fracas with U.S.S.R. may have caused), both men of Herr Mann's generation, and both writers of great culture, have found that the only hope for their future as creative writers lay in Socialism. The younger school in England is turning to the left. In America there is a fine tradition of left-wing writers. In Spain writers are fighting. They all have a belief in the future. Herr Mann has no such belief, denies that there are seeds of greatness in the world today.
Herr Mann's reaction to war was to escape from its horrors (and its lessons) by writing a study of a dog's psychology. Barbusse and Toiler perceived the real issues of those years, and it helped them to an understanding.
I can sympathise with Herr Mann's dislike for the ignorant doctrinaire of today. But the modern socialist movement— being but a part of the traditions of history—is a very great affirmation of man's power to organise his works. Herr Mann's position will become increasingly lonely. Lenin pointed out that a Socialist State must make room for the " solitary " thinker—but he did mean one that was not hostile. Intellectual isolation will become intellectual death, for there
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