MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD
NICOLSON SOMETHING of the old Saturnalian spirit -still animates our Christian festival. The Romans were vague, and therefore mysterious, about the origin and nature of Saturn and his wife'Ops. They apprehended that he was some primitive god of fertility and would represent him with a sickle (but not a hammer) in his hand. In later years, they came to indentify him with the Greek god Chronos, who, after the most abominable domestic dissensions, was expelled from Olympus and took refuge in the Treasury building below the Capitoline hill. The feet of his statue were, for some unexplained reason, bandaged in strips of wool. When sacrificing to him, men kept the head uncovered according to the Greek rite. At the winter solstice the feast of Saturn was celebrated throughout the city during the week between December 17th and December 23rd. The senators and the knights would discard their togas and would attend an open-air banquet in front of the temple, dressed only in a ,bush-shirt called synthesis. It must have been a chilly and formal meal, and the company, with shouts of lo Saturnalia ! would rapidly dissolve to their homes, where the real party had been prepared. Presents would be exchanged, consisting mainly of decorated wax tapers and little dolls; all manner of round games would be played and the family would amuse themselves by gambling for nuts. The most striking feature of the Feast of Saturn was that the slaves were granted complete licence for the occasion; they were allowed to sit at the family table, were served by their masters and mistresses, and were permitted to indulge in impertinent jokes. The Romans explained this odd licence, this few days abandonment of graritas, by asserting that they were celebrating the memory of the golden age, when there had been no class distinctions, no urban difficulties, and when the lion munched his meal porridge in company with the lamb. A general mood of benevolence, domestic affection and self- indulgence marked the seven days' feast. * * * * It is natural that men should contrive an interlude of organised merriment to compensate them for the long dark evenings and to fortify them against the ten weeks of winter that are to come. It is salutary also that for a few days in every year people should discard the struggles and animosities of their ordinary life and should relax in surfeited smiles. I hope that our present Christmas celebrations will prove unusually saturnalian, since no year that I can remember has accumulated so much rancour. The Mother of Parliaments has, in the last few weeks, relinquished her matronly manner and adopted a forensic mode.. Mature men and women have allowed themselves to behave like quarrelsome children, refusing to retire when bed-time comes, and uttering ,across the floor of that august chamber noises resembling " Yah ! " or " Boo ! " Even those eminent dignitaries whom the B.B.C. invite to their symposia have lost control of their tempers and have shouted or sulked. The front page of every newspaper carries stories of people of every age and calling who have surrendered to venomous or violent ill-temper; the age of iron appears entirely to have obliterated all recollection of the age of gold. I should like to see our knights and senators feasting amicably together, arrayed in bush-shirts, in New Palace Yard. I should like to see the candles lit in every living-room, and whole families, glowing with domestic felicity, gambling for nuts. The gentle associations of our Christian festival, combining with the old Saturnian legend, should teach us that: - " Noi troppo odiammo e soferimmo. Amaze ! Ii mondo e bello e Santo e l'avvenir."
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The varied loveliness of this world should surely prove a solace to our perplexities and irritations; and even in the welter of our angry age it would be well to remember that the future is indeed sacred; that we all share the responsibility for seeing that it is not too irremediably compromised. Our prob- lems are too intricate and violent to be solved in a_ single generation, but at least we can recognise the fact that they will never be solved if we approach them in a spirit of bad temper. We British and our kinsmen overseas, being con- genitally tolerant, should shine as an example of equanimity. We are not -as nervous as the Americans, not as sensitive and suspicious as the Germanb, not as obsessed as the Russians, not as intellectually irritable as the French, and not distracted by hidden tides of racial emotion as are the Asians and the Africans. It would be a serious pity were we also to start becoming permanently cross. Now that our physical power has diminished, we shall have to rely more and more upon the strength of our character. Without approving of the old superbia Britannorum, I really do believe that we possess the most sensible character that history can record; it would be dreadful indeed if we, with all our other defects, ceased to be sensible. V Certainly we are assailed with internal and external maladies, more mysterious than any that previous generations have been called upon to diagnose and cure. But there is no reason why we should become frightened or hysterical; common sense is the heritage of every Briton, and we must rise to our birthright, let foreigners be as unreasonable and as tiresome as they may.
I should wish, at this season of goodwill, to cite one instance at least where I feel we may be departing from our accustomed equability of judgement. I fear that public opinion in this country is beginning to adopt an unreasonable attitude towards the United Nations Organisation. From the distant days of San Francisco, I have felt that the introduction of the veto clause, although acclaimed by some as a realistic recognition of the facts of power, would in practice render it impossible for U.N.O. to operate as a world-tribunal in cases where the interests of a strong Government were concerned. It appeared evident, moreover, that the implied principle that all nations were equal in responsibility and force was a ridiculous principle, and one which would render U.N.O., not a centre of order and integration, but a sounding-board for individual grievances and an element of disorder and disintegration. It is natural for man to imagine that international affairs can be managed on the analogy of national affairs, and that a world- tribunal, acting through a world-police, can maintain law and order by exercising sanctions against all delinquents and offenders. The fallacy of such an illusion is, of course, that in internal affairs the forces of order are overwhelmingly superior to the forces of disorder; whereas in external affairs the burglars and the murderers may prove more powerful than the police. The exposure of this fallacy has brought with it a reaction against U.N.O. which is surely an unreasonable reaction. Were U.N.O. to be disbanded as a failure, a dangerous vacuum would be created. Let us admit that politically it has so far proved ineffective; but let us also recognise that, were it abolished, there would be no further public communication between the western and the eastern worlds, no platform enab- ling each side openly to state its case. That surely is the sensible, the patient'and the tolerant attitude to adopt.
It would be agreeable to return to the golden age of Saturn, or even to the reign of Hadrian, when, after a prolonged period of horrible disorder, the civilised world settled down to wax tapers and parlour games. Such certainties and securities have not been vouchsafed to our generation. Around the whole sur- face of our globe the crust of habit has been cracked,. and we still do not know what volcanic elements these wide fissures will release. Yet our distress and apprehension will not be assuaged by ill-temper; they will be assuaged only by equanimity, patience and common sense.
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