MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
iAM sometimes asked which of the many changes which I have witnessed, in the course of a long and well-spent life, I consider to have been most conducive to human prosperity and happiness. I do not reply that the invention of the internal combustion engine, of wireless telegraphy or of flying-machines has added to the sum of human ease or felicity. I believe, in fact, that man was intended to possess a slow, rather than a febrile, pulse ; and that the alterations which I have observed during my lifetime in the speed of communica- tions have tended to numb and diminish, rather than to enliven and increase, the delicacy and the essential variety of human perceptions. Our powers of observation and the amount of impressions which we can usefully absorb are strictly limited ; our receptive faculties are shallow vessels, which, if filled to overflowing, merely spill the surplus on the ground. The quantity of oral and visual impressions which today pour in upon us from every quarter dilute the very essence of feeling ; we lose our sense of wonder and the wings of our imagina- tion become bruised and wearied. St. Mark's is reduced to the proportions of a picture post-card, and the Cyclades, as we fly over them, no longer shimmer in the amethyst haze of sentiment, but swing below us as bare, stark rocks in the sea. It could be said, I suppose, that of all the changes which have occurred in the last half-century, the most beneficent are the discoveries of medical science. Assuredly much pain has been alleviated and much hope created by contemporary researches into the functioning of the endocrine glands and by such discoveries as insulin and the many varieties of antiseptic and anaesthetic drugs. One can always check the enthusiasm of those hedonists who say they would like to have lived in the age of Hadrian by suggesting that their enjoyment of that secure and cultured epoch would have been diminished if they had had to undergo even a minor operation, with their legs strapped to a deal board and their shrieks stifled by a wad dipped in opium and Falernian. Assuredly the outstanding achieve- ments of the twentieth century have been medicinal rather than
mechanical. • * * * Yet I should say that on the whole the most creative, and to my mind the most valuable, of all the changes which have occurred in the last fifty years is the emergence of a social conscience. It is not merely that the old nineteenth-century alliance between the terri- torial aristocracy and the middle class has had to surrender authority to the organised proletariat ; it is rather that the old easy assumptions regarding the inevitability of social injustice have in all classes been replaced by an active realisation that the extremes of wealth and poverty are both unnecessary and wrong. I can recall the days when the rich really believed that their privileges were part of a predestined order of society, and when they could solace such twinges of conscience as assailed them by voluntary public service and by occasional district visiting. I am not suggesting that the old aristocracy were blind and selfish ; they possessed a high sense of responsibility and had the greatest contempt, at least in this country, for those of their caste who evaded those responsibilities or who exploited their privileges for purposes of personal pleasure or in- dulgence. All I am saying is that our fathers, however honourable and benign they may have been, had rarely any alert sense of economic injustice and that the social conscience for them was but a fleeting, flabby mood. Today every sane person realises that a society which provides security for the few while leaving the multitude at the mercy of chance charity is an ill-organised society. That general realisation constitutes a valuable change.
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All great alterations in human conscience are apt to bring with them great gains together with some loss. As 'rc get further and further away from the old conception of a stratified society as being in some manner a law of nature, we begin, irmnsibly, to indulge in egalitarian illusions. If all men are born equal, then it is wrong that any men should profit in any way by their own eminence. If the age of hereditary privilege is passing, then all privilege, however acquired, must be denounced. A moment's thought should, however, convince even the most idealistic egalitarian that it is not in accord- ance with the (perhaps unfortunate) laws of nature that all men or all animals should be born equal. Immense disparities are inevitable. It is not possible to conceive. of any society in which the majority exercise direct rule ; there must be an elite of specially energetic or gifted people who achieve eminence and power. The aim of the egalitarian should be, not to reduce every individual to the standard of the least intelligent or active, but to secure that no child born in this island is denied the personal opportunity to develop his own faculties and to achieve such eminence as his gifts and energies entitle him to achieve. Such eminence, moreover, if acquired by free competition, should bring with it certain overt rewards. Our awakened social conscience is in itself an admirable ethical gain ; but it will cease to be either admirable or ethical if it becomes poisoned with jealousy of the successful. Envy is one of the most insidious and corrosive of all venoms, and if we are to become envious of the rewards rightly accorded to the eminent we shall become an embittered, suspicious, and therefore ineffective race.
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1., Why should Mr. Aneurin Bevan not spend his holiday in Italy if he so desires ; or why should not Sir Stafford Cripps, if he feels it necessary, recover his health in a Swiss nursing home ? Each of these two has endured many months of extremely arduous labour and has before him the prospect of even greater ardours to come. It is fitting that they should obtain their relaxation in such a manner as is best calculated to restore their vigour for renewed combats. It is useful, moreover, that our rulers should go abroad for their holi- days and should expend thereby the natural rigidity of their minds. I blush with shame and rage when I observe people or newspapers being downright mean about our elite. Another instance of this subtle poison of envy, which may infect our whole body politic, is the outcry raised by the report of the Select Committee on Govern- ment Hospitality. People have been angered by the fact that the Government maintains a hotel at No. 2 Park Street for the entertain- ment of distinguished foreign visitors. In the old evil days Lord Salisbury could entertain the Shah of Persia at Hatfield, Lord Lansdowne could invite M. Iswolsky down to Bowood, or Mr. Harcourt could gratify a Dominion statesman with a week-end at Nuneham. Mr. Creech Jones or Mr. Harold Wilson is not able to offer similar delights to visitors from overseas. Yet these social amenities are a valuable lubricant in all negotiations, and their absence causes offence. I can recall a highly unpleasant incident which arose many years ago, before the Government Hospitality Fund existed, in connection with Monsieur Bratiano, at that time Prime Minister of Rumania. The memory of that incident will at times recur to me in the watches of the night.
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Monsieur Bratiano, before reaching the shore of this island, had been received in France. The Presidential train had carried him in triumph and self-satisfaction from Marseilles to Paris, and on arriving at the Gare de Lyons he had been met by the Foreign Secretary, a guard of honour, a blue carpet and several hydrangeas in tubs. On reaching Dover he had been obliged (owing to an oversight) to join a queue of immigrants, ,under a sharp notice bearing the words " Aliens this way." On reaching Victoria Station he was met by me. The rage which Monsieur Bratiano experienced (and expressed) at that moment made me feel that there were occasions when we might push the superbia Britannorum a little too far. Obviously, if you abolish Hatfield, Bowood and Nuneham, you must have some- thing like No. z Park Street. The useful work which, since the day of Monsieur Bratiano's querulous, and indeed thunderous, arrival, the Government Hospitality Fund, under the direction of Sir Eric Crankshaw, has accomplished merits praise, not jealous jeers. Bratianos today are far more numerous and no less touchy ; it is ungracious and foolish to begrudge them their entertainment.
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