Under Thirty Page
THE USE OF LEISURE -V
ONE of Cardinal Newman's biographers, in depicting the Oxford of the Cardinal's youth, has contrasted it with the Oxford of today, finding the most noticeable and notable difference in the uses which his contemporaries and ours make of their leisure hours. For the undergraduates of today there is an endless variety of pursuits : cricket, football, rowing, squash, athletics, besides hunting and polo for the rich, and a whole catalogue of kindred activities. For the undergraduate of the early nineteenth century, there was, of course, hunting for the well-to-do, a certain amount of cricket and boating, but little organised, and for the rest little to do except to walk, or to stay indoors. How we have progressed ! What a much better time we have, how many temptations are removed from our paths, how healthy and strong and efficient we are, or ought to be !
No doubt ; but the comparison is a little less conducive to complacency when we set side by side the Oxford Move- ment of which Newman was the apostle, and the Oxford Group which would, perhaps, claim to be its modern successor. The comparison of the Movement with the Group is in a sense grossly unfair to Oxford, for while the one was a product of its soil the other, emphatically, was not. But it is perfectly fair to ask ourselves what would have been the fate of the Oxford Movement in the 1930's, and why. The Oxford Movement flourished, as it could only flourish, in an atmosphere of learning and leisured talk. Today it would have been received with exemplary politeness and commendable tolerance. There would have been little Protestant hatred, not much more rationalist scorn. Many more young men would, if required by their tutors, have written competent little essays accurately summarising the issues than would have been capable of doing so in the 1830's. And practically nobody would have understood what Newman was about, or have felt that the Movement to him had any meaning whatever : it would not have been part of the syllabus, it would not have had any immediate political significance, and nobody could have spared the time.
To some this may seem a melancholy reflection. It would not, in itself, be very important were it not the fact that what is changed at Oxford and Cambridge is changed even more elsewhere. At the old residential universities old habits do to some extent persist : there are, or at any rate were in the late '20's, young men who would argue over their luncheon till four o'clock in the afternoon, or over their dinner till four o'clock in the morning. The present Vice-Chancellor of Oxford once went so far as to say that these informal debates after midnight formed the most important part of university education, but it is a saying which has found few echoes in the seats of authority. The consequence of this encouragement of discussion for its own sake has been that for many Oxford has appeared to be a hot-bed of Communism. One of the most intelligent and distinguished generals in the British Army, for instance, recently painted the picture so vividly as almost to induce his hearers to believe that Dr. Lindsay habitually intoned the Internationale in the Sheldonian Theatre and that the Principals of Women's Colleges were to be seen dancing the Carmagnole in the High. The moral, no doubt, was to give the undergraduates a good afternoon's bayonet drill at Sandhurst and send them to bed tired.
One of the definitions of leisure given by Murray's Dictionary is " opportunity "—the opportunity given by freedom from any particular task or from any fixed routine. The modern youth is besieged by every manner of solicitation so to arrange his life, that when his daily work is ended another set routine will ensue. " Enrich Your Leisure " invites the London County Council on behalf of its evening classes. " Holidays with Pay " are offered by the Territorial Army, by way of a more specific inducement. Every conceivable sort of organisation follows suit : churches, cricket clubs, and political parties.
The value of evening classes is beyond dispute ; in times such as these the Territorial Army deserves every support ; it is excellent that young men who have spent their day in a dusty office or an oily factory should have facilities for sport —it is a pity that there are not more and better facilities. But moderation in all things : the danger is that in the attempt to enrich leisure, it will be destroyed. There is a tendency to encourage a young man to attend evening classes every night, except one which, together with the week-end, he sets aside for his duties in the Territorial Army. Fortunately, some instinct, denounced by the moralist as idleness, preserves most young men from the fate which they are encouraged to pursue as an ideal. This does not prevent the tendency itself from being thoroughly vicious, particularly as in this case corruptio is so eminently optimi pessima.
It cannot sufficiently be emphasised that, for the adult, organised leisure is a contradiction in terms : where organisation steps in spontaneity walks out. With the child it is not so : he likes to form a gang, whether to play cricket or to pillage an orchard; and the problem is to guide him into the cricket-playing gang and out of the apple-stealing gang. Adults, too, like to form a gang, and it is a very good thing for the maintenance of society, for the continuation of beneficial institutions, whether it be the Church or the M.C.C., that it is so. But society also needs the fresh impetus which comes only from individual thought, and while this may be based on experience won in and through institutions, it becomes valuable only after the clash between different minds is followed by the inner conflict in the mind of each party to the discussion. For this some measure of freedom from routine is essential.
Nor is it sufficient to set apart a class of thinkers, like the samurai in H. G. Wells' Modern Utopia, or the rulers of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Life is so complicated that it requires innumerable little adjustments to circumstance which can only be effected successfully by a number of individuals resolving for themselves the moral and economic problems which go to make the social pattern : the alternative is for a few generalities to be frequently misapplied to individual cases. This for the Dictatorship States is a lesser evil. With them, dominated by aims essentially non-human, a standardised mechanical efficiency must be the aim, the division of society into the police and the policed, the Robert and the Robot, the means. No citizen is allowed the luxury of a private life, and loneliness and quiet are eschewed as likely to breed independence. Thus it is that the adjective " Fascist " is not so misapplied to well-meaning organisers of the lives of the poor as would otherwise appear.
The best use of leisure is for the individual to make a fresh decision for himself how he will employ each period that occurs, not to slip into a merely repetitive process. The actual choice of occupation does not matter so much; it is the fact of the exercise of a choice which is vital. Some individuals will make bad choices, spend too much time drinking or dancing, or watching films. Some will, no doubt, cultivate exaggerated or ill-balanced ideas. Others, through the help of books and friends, will develop their personalities to the highest pitch and become the leaders whom society needs. In any case it is better to err as a man than to be guided as a child.
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