God's Englishmen
England—Past, Present and Future. By Douglas Jerrold. (Dent. ios. 6d.)
THERE is something enormously refreshing about an unques- tioningly held, unashamedly displayed, vigorously defended outfit of prejudices. If they are the same as one's own, to see them valiantly championed is a heartening reassurance ; if they are emphatically not, the 'challenge is stimulating. "Paiens ont tort et chretiens ont droit"—the affirmation of Charle- magne's chronicler may be deficient in fine shades and com- prehensive sympathies, but on either side it stirs the blood.
The connecting theme of Mr. Jerrold's disquisition on English history is precisely that chretiens ont drait. The actual pagans were not so entirely wrong ; any faith which sets man and his social relationships in a framework of super- 'natural law is better than none. The really damnable aberration, the villain of the ideological piece, is secular humanism ; the road lies clear from the Enlightenment to the totalitarians, by way (subject to different short cuts) of the abandonment of natural law, the rise of mercantile and indus- trial capitalism, and a self-destructive Welfare State. When Europe abandoned the Christian concept of an organic society, based on the family and the corporation and acknowledging a " closed moral system " which the law could only reflect, for an uneasy balance between irresponsible individual and omnicompetent national authority, the seeds were sown of all the evil to come. But the way back is not barred. What is needed is a return to Christian education ; economic measures to safeguard the family through the encouragement of small property ; fiscal measures to shift the responsibility for social welfare services from the State to the revived corporation ; and a written constitution establishing principle above the whim of transitory majorities.
The brilliantly told story of England's past, from earliest prehistory to 1939, is related throughout to this timeless theme. Where, says Mr. Jerrold, is the origin of this salutary or that pernicious institution ; at this point our forefathers chose right, at this other disastrously wrong ; our strength in resisting this evil, our weakness before that danger, have their origins here or there. Unfolding his narrative, he offers some startling judgments, such as—to quote only early chapters— that King Alfred was a second-rate near-failure, William of Normandy an emancipator, and Magna Carta. a reactionary feudal document and a classic of political imbecility. One is less surprised to find him maintaining that the Reformation was a catastrophe, the dissolution of the monasteries an act of brigandage and King Charles a martyr ; or, coming down to our own times, that a very high proportion of our troubles both at home and abroad can be attributed to Lloyd George. One characteristic of his attitude to events (not unshared by like-minded political thinkers) remains mystifying ; the combination of Christian conformity in economic and social affairs with a near Machiavellian Realpolitik inforeign relations. Never mind about the decency of the forces with which you ally yourself, providing they are strong ; never mind about sacrificing the rights of the weaker, if it is seriously incon; venient to makitain them. In a hopelessly imperfect world one may withtlfit inconsistency abide by these maxims both at home and abroad ; but it is surely intellectually awkward to unite their acceptance, in the name of expediency, in foreign affairs, to a " closed morality " at home which rejects the expediency in the name of the absolute. Certainly few things could be less expedient than the adoption, in a dynamically changing economy with an individual expectation of life of nearly seventy years, of the institutional framework appro- priate to a nearly-static economy with an expectation of life barely half as good—let alone an educational system which, in present circumstances, would probably replace a generation of indifferent semi-pagans by one of militant atheists. Mr. Jerrold's book, in fact, illustrates the central dilemma of modern society ; man demands stability, security, con- tinuity, and his own genius destroys the conditions of their achievement ; he demands a faith, and in the cosmos which that same genius has little by little unveiled he sees no room for the faith of his fathers. f Chretiens ont drat," cries Mr. Jerrold, as others haCe cried before him, to a materialistic and uneasy society ; but the heirs of secular humanism, however conscious of bankruptcy, respond " Que scay-je ?"
HONOR CROOME.
Previous page
