BOOKS OF THE DAY
Semi-Realism
Democratic Realism. By A. C. Hill. (Cape. 7s. 6d.) THIS is a book which combines the useful and the maddening in about equal proportions. With Mr. Hill's object it is impossible not to have great sympathy. Political controversy and exposition is at the moment at a low level Many important questions are not so much discussed as shouted about ; many very doubtful propositions are treated as if they were axioms, beyond question- ing by any rational man. This deficiency in the critical spirit may have very awkward national consequences, for the public is being encouraged in mental laziness, in national and class complacency and in the disregard of some truths—such as that the world does not owe this country, or even the workinz classes of this country, a good and easy living. Mr. Hill has some relevant and sensible things to say about this attitude, and he makes some good points on more debatable issues.
He is, for various reasons, only moderately interested in the growth of equality, which is a matter of choice ; he is also con- vinced that the average Englishman is less devoted to this ideal than the intelligentzia think, and there is a lot to be said for this view, as foreigners from more egalitarian countries, like France, Scotland, the United States, all note. There is a risk that some valuable human qualities may be last in a general levelling process ; not everything in the gentlemanly ideal was contemptible, and we cannot be certain that we shall preserve what is valuable in it in our increasingly egalitarian society. Our mediocrity may be far from golden—and will be, if we accept too complacently the standards of the man in the street. Mr. Hill, too, may well be right in thinking that genuine, human egalitarian sentiment resents the highbrow as much as it resents an economic or social inequality that has no damned nonsense of merit about it. And, in his insis- tence on the primacy of foreign politics, on the dangers of that short-sighted " democratic " ignoring of unpleasant realities from which we suffered so much during the inter-war period, Mr. HMIs insisting on a truth that can hardly be insisted on too much.
Yet the result of reading this book is not likely to be the con- version of the Socialist, or even the shaking of his complacency. Mr. Hill believes in "aristocracy," but he does not make it clear whether by aristocracy he means the rule of the best (however their goodness is determined) or of a hereditary ruling class, or of a feudal nobility. It appears to be the latter. The country gentle- man of the old type seems to be the aristocrat of Mr. Hill's dreams. So far, so good. But a self-professed realist ought, surely, to look a little closer at the reasons for the decline of the squirearchy or even of the nobility. And before he rashly condemns the French nobility for not "guarding the interests of a bold and hardy peasantry," he ought surely to ask himself what happened to the "bold and hardy peasantry" of England under the deadly, leadership and protection of the squires, great and small. The same inability to see where his arguments are leading him makes his economic sections very ineffective. The belief ' nationalisation as a panacea is naive, but it is not likely to be shake by the naive criticism it gets here. Monopoly has its dangers, b in what way are they lessened by the monopoly being private? Mr Hill, in form, admits this, but he writes as if the English pub utility company were, in fact, a highly competitive organisation lik a manufacturing concern. The Socialist case for nationalising rhos sections of the national economy that are already monopolies is no water-tight, but at least it is not to be refuted by giving the common reader the impression that the Wessex Electricity Company is some mystical way different from the Oxford City Electricity Department. The same lack of realism is evident in the brief dis- cussion of the falling birth-rate. It is suggested that this is due t the growth of State provision for security, but it began, as Mr. Hill knows, in France, where social security is a new and not, yet, deeply-rooted idea. Here one is inclined, like a college tutor to suggest required reading and tell Mr. Hill to look at Mrs. Myrdal' Nation and Family as, for the colour question, he ought to look a another book, American Dilemma. It would be possible to go with this kind of criticism ; to suggest that Mr. Hill should look a the history of modern French painting before assuming that artists need the spur of hunger and have in fact gained by aristocratic patronage. Cezanne owed his survival to abundant private means, and, apart from dealers, the chief "angel," as the Americans say, of the great modern painters was not an aristocrat but a business- man, a much more enlightened patron than the elder Morgan, who liked good artists when they were safely dead.
The pedantic will find a good deal to distress them here, from th odd view of the constitution of Sparta set forth on page 9, to the misuse of "pace" on page 165 (since Bismarck is the author of th famous dictum about the importance of the fact that the language of the United States is English it should be teste Bismarck). Mr. Hill (or, as his complacency about voluntary hospital service sug- gests, it may be Dr. Hill) has made a gallant assault on a fortress that has many gaps in its defences, but only a few of his attacks
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