MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
AT the Guildhall last Friday, Mr. Winston Churchill warned us that unless we all started to be very gentle towards each other, the country might "shake and shatter itself into bankruptcy and ruin.' These were alarming words. Cer- tainly the Prime Minister was correct in suggesting that the political cleavage between Right and Left that was manifested with such cliff-like abruptness at the recent Election might become a serious obstacle to our recovery. Animosity and pride are heaped up one against the other in almost equal proportions, like Victorian engravings of the passage of the Red Sea. There have been times, even in recent history, when the country has been similarly sundered in twain. I am old enough to remember the bitterness of Party feeling that arose between 1910 and 1914 over the Government's decision to abolish the veto of the House of Lords and the suspicion that they might intervene to coerce Ulster into accepting the domination of the Dublin Parliament. There were some elder statesmen who contended that the Parlia- ment Act had shattered the equilibrium of the realm, and that, until a reformed Second Chamber were created with adequate suspensory powers, the Constitution must be regarded as in abey- ance. It thus became the duty of the King, as guardian of the Constitution, to refuse tphe Royal Assent to any Bills, such as a Home Rule Bill, that altered fundamentally the structure of the State. Fortunately, King George V possessed a wonderful instinct for rejecting bad advice. But the tension engendered at the time created an atmosphere in which sparks would flash and crackle at the most incidental contact ; women of unimpeachable birth and breeding would make faces at each other in the Ladies' Gallery ; on one occasion I observed a gentleman, walking in Hyde Park after church, swing round abruptly and stalk in the opposite direction, under the impression that he had caught sight , of Mr. Birrell. For the first time since the Reform Bills hostesses were careful not to invite to the same dinner members of opposite sides of the House.
* * * * The lack of gentleness manifested during those hot four years on both sides of politics was emphasised by the actions of the militant suffragettes. They introduced into British politics the weapon of direct action that had not been employed with similar violence since 1832. I am still uncertain in my own mind whether the militant wing of the movement was, or was not, Justified in the tactics then adopted. One might have supposed that people who could behave with such lack of reticence, who could impose upon the innocent public so many grave incon- veniences, were not the best evangelists of a cause that seemed to depend for its success upon sweet reasonableness. I am quite sure that had I at the time been engaged in politics I should have been a firm champion of woman's suffrage and at the same time have deplored the nuisance created by the militants. Yet there are those who even to this day contend that, unless. these perhaps too dramatic methods had been adopted to advertise the wrongs to which the women of England were then exposed, the ordinary citizen would have Continued to regard the cause with rather amused indifference. That may well be so. Yet all I can remember is that families were rent by these controversies ; real unhappiness was caused to the aunts, mothers and grand- mothers of these devoted militants ; and people shook sad heads saying that the world had gone mad, that all reverence had died, and that the British Empire was losing self-control. Then came the First War and we ceased for four years from being rent asunder.
* * * * Were the animosities, suspicions and insinuations more serious and bitter during,those four years than they are today? At the time it seemed as if acerbity could go no further. 'rYet funda- mentally both sides in those days desired the same sort of world— a world in which the British Navy would rule the 'seven seas, la which young men of enterprise and ambition could make large private fortunes, in which travel was unrestricted and food unrationed, in which on warm June evenings the butler and the footmen would set out the teacups beneath the cedars on the lawn. .Today, I am told, the Left wants.a world made safe for • the worker and the Right wants a world in which, by a process of gradualness and unction, the proletariat can gradually be diluted and assuaged. In fact, there is nothing in the least incompatible between these two theories of society, were it not that both sides have been taught to believe that the incompati- bility is vast, permanent and determined. Both sides want social democracy ; the only difference that I can see is that one side wants it more impatiently than the other. The rich have long since abandoned all hope of remaining so ; never again, they are well aware, will they be entranced by the spectacle of the butler carrying a silver tea-urn across the grass ; never again can they hope to entertain twenty guests for the races ; never again will they be so gay as to order four new suits from their tailor on a May morning. Does the passing of so sumptuous and unneces- sary a world really fill their souls with acid ? I do not believe it. Quite happily will they settle down to their. Hoovers and their Frigidaires. Since, after all, the British upper classes, even at the worst of times, never contained quite so many obstinate, foolish or selfish individuals as those of Hungary or Rumania.
I do not accept the view that the difference between the Party animosities of 1910 and those of today is that, whereas the Liberals really wanted the same sort of world as the Conserva- tives, the Left now desires a world that to the Right would be totally unacceptable. The adult Socialist of today is becoming indifferent to ideologies and dogmas, even as the young Con- servative has no desire at all to revert to the world of splendour that his -father knew. , We have, as Mr. Churchill remarked recently, much in common. The danger is that we do not recog- nise.our similarity with sufficient distinctness, and mainly because, our eyes and ears are muffled by shibboleths. How agreeable it is, when mixing metaphors, to do the thing thoroughly, especially when the impression that one desires to convey is one of sound confusing thought! More than in other countries is the disparity of the classes emphasised in England by the lamentable stratification of our tones of voice. I have been told that it is possible for an elocutionist of experience to detect immediately whether a mail was educated at Harrow or Eton, at Winchester or Wellington. I have myself occasionally observed gradations of tone between the exuberance of Harrow, the grace of Eton, the precision of Winchester and the manliness of Wellington. But it is certainly possible to, differentiate in a second between the class-accents that widely separate the main strata of our Society. Great, and above all apparent, are the differences between those who say " reel " or "real," between those who place the stress in the word " controversy " upon the first or second syllable. How idiotic that this should be so I Such differences of tone, indicating different channels of education, scarcely exist in other countries. It is only in this island that wide gaps of accent open between the public school- boy and the rest. Although a benevolent person; and one who in middle age ceased to be objectionably snobbish, I am conscious that when a person says " reely ' I experience dis- pleasure: does he also wince when I say " really " ? Such motions of like and dislike, such evidences of separateness, do not extend to regional voices ; nobody is anything but delighted when a person speaks with a Scottish or Midland accent. It is these beastly grades of cockney or standard English that rend us astmder. We must now change all that. If I promise every morning to say aloud "a reel reel of cotton," will someone else promise to repeat the words "this reel of cotton is real" ? If all of us did this every day before breakfast, then this gap at least might eventually be closed.
Previous page
