he A FORGOTTEN IDEAL By J. HAMPDEN JACKSON A STRANGE
mood has come over this country, a mood which A has been variously 'described as cynicism, scepticism and bewilderment. We entered this war as champion of small nations, we continued it in a great national effort for self-preservation, we are ending it as champions of . . . what? "As this war has pro- gressed it has become less ideological in its character," said Churchill in his great May speech. What ideals are left? Among the general public I can discern only three: Security, Planning and Uniformity. Security against fear and want, against aggression and penury ; Planning for employment and prosperity ; Uniformity for justice's sake and as a means to the first two ends. All three slogans are doubtless expedient in present circumstances, but it is strange to find them adopted in Britain as ideals. For, pursued for their own sakes, they can lead to nothing but the Servile State.
If these be our contemporary slogans, we have indeed forgotten something. We have forgotten that for a century and more we have stood to the world for what became known as liberalism ; we have forgotten that the impulsion given by our nation to human affairs has not been towards Security, Planning and Uniformity but towards Liberty, Equality and Fraternitl.
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity—the words are almost meaning- less. The language of liberalism has become so stale with repetition that it is almost a dead language, like that of the pulpit. We take it all for granted, pay our lip-service and go on our way—which is not our way. If we are not to lose ourselves we must reinstate the ideals by reinstating the big words. Beginning with Liberty. The Fascist preachers tell us that Liberty means license, and so it does unless it be conceived as responsibility—as responsibility for one's own soul, for one's own conduct, for one's own job. It may be objected that the word Responsibility has been debased as badly as Liberty. In the Army, for, instance, a man is "responsible" to his immediate superior in rank, "responsible" for the particular task set by him. This is the opposite of the true sense, which is to be responsible to one's self, to one's God, responsible for the things one holds important. "True liberty," said Acton, "is a self-determined, self-chosen perseverance In the way we deliberately think the best." The man who is not responsible is not free.
Equality needs no re-interpretation ; it needs only to be put back in its context. No one ever suggested that men were equal in anything except rights. The long and wonderful campaign lot the civil liberties was a fight for the rights of the citizen—the right to resist oppression (Magna Carta), equal rights before tht law (the Petition of Right), the right of free speech, free conscience, free association. Today Equality has become a -bread-and-butter con- ception: people think in terms of equal pay, equal pensions, equal standards of living. These conditions exist artiong prisoners, slaves and conscripts. If we are to avoid the Servile State the emphasis must be put back where it belongs: "Man is born . . . equal in rights."
Fraternity has become almost as silly a word as sorority. In its most popular political use it is a rallying-cry to unite the dis- inherited against their richer brothers ; thus it achieves its contra- diction, becoming a slogan of class-war. In fact, it mean' a respect for human dignity. What that respect means can never b.: explained to those who do not feel it. Respect for human dignity does not involve a classless society or one in which distinctions are based on rank or service to the community. The French bourgeois expresses it when he takes off his hat to the concierge and addresses hes as Madame. The English express it by being unable to use a he impera- tive when speaking to servants (" Would you mind" doing this, "Could you possibly" do that). There was more respect for human dignity in Royalist Spain than in Gibraltar under the British Army where distinctions go by rank, more among members of the Catholic Church than among those of the Communist Party. Fra.ernity is not a matter of making men equals, but of feeling them to be such.
In place of the French trinity, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, there- fore, I suggest Responsibility, Rights and Respect for human dignity. But it is not enough to restate the slogans of liberalism ; we must remind ourselves of what it has achieved Nowhere was the struggle for liberalism more consistent or more successful than in this country. In religion it gave us toleration, freedom from the priest, emancipation. In politics it gave us responsible Government and the paradoxes of one-man-one-vote and His Majesty's Opposi- tion. In the social sphere it gave us the right to strike, the right to education and the emancipation of women (" God! " wrote Keats, "she is like a milk-white lamb that bleats For man's protection"). In economics, by freeing us of the trammels of custom and tabu, it gavaus the application of science to industry, the capitalist-manager's triumph over production and transport. When in this sphere the Liberals forgot their principles, the Labour movement arose to recall liberalism to its own doctrines ; the British Labour movement has until very recently been more Liberal than Socialist: Radical is the word that best describes it.
It is right that we should be modest about our national achieve- ment, proper that we should realise our shortcomings and the need to repair the ravages of laisser-faire and class inequalities. But at the risk of sinful pride we should remind ourselves that for a hundred years and more the people of Europe have looktd to us for a model. The aspirations of the, peoples of the occupied countries, like those of the men of 1848, are towards the liberalism which the British to a greater extent than any other nation achieved. In no way could we serve the world worse than by forgetting the ideals that we stood for. The world does not look to us for Security, Planning and Uniformity ; it could get those from any great totalitarian power. It looks to us for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. If we are not careful it will look in vain.
The young Englishmen I meet talk of nothing but secure jobs and "Beveridge "; they believe in nothing, in the political field, but planning ; they appear to welcome any degree of uniformity. (No doubt there was always a tendency that way. "The fears we expressed lest the inevitable growth of social equality and of the government of public opinion should impose an oppressive yoke of uniformity in opinion and practice might easily have appeared chimerical to those who looked more at present facts than at ten- dencies," wrote J. S. Mill.) Will they throw the baby of liberalism out with its dirty bath-water, or will they remember in time how the. child was born and what their duties are as its guardians?
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