Ronald Cartland was in some ways a typical product of
his age. He believed, as many others who were not Conservatives believed, in the feasibility of Tory Socialism. He believed with passionate intensity that with intelligence and faith it should be possible for us to create a rational England and to level out the inequalities which our system had inherited from the past. Emotionally, he was tortured by the condition of the working classes and by the feeble palliatives with which the administration sought to allay the worst iniquities of the distressed areas. He believed also that our political genius was so vivid and our political experience so ancient that we
* Ronald Cardand. By His Sister. (Coffins. 12s. 6d.) could achieve the modernisation of our system without destroyin, all that was more valuable and significant in our heritage from past. These views were shared by many of those who accompain him to Westminster in 1935, and Cartland differed from them oal in the greater passion, the intenser energy, the more unflinchin courage which he brought to the cause. Yet in other respects h• was in fact exceptional. The tepid water of their beliefs was b him raised to boiling-point. He was able to avow and to affirm th• then unfashionable doctrine of patriotism. He had a fervent bdi in our Imperial mission, and he desired us to assert that mission o every occasion with fortitude, integrity end power. His affectio for the Junior Imperial League was based upon his belief that i them could be fused the twin objects of socialism and empire " They recognise," he said of them, " that Imperial Democracy survive only if each., citizen accepts willingly the responsibilitie which Empire and Democracy, separately and together, entail. B precept and example they set out to make men thrill again with for of Country, once more to give them pride in their dearest posses sions, to give them faith in Britain's destiny." Those were unus
words for a young man to use in 1937 ; Ronald Cartland believed • them with every fibre of his being ; and three years later, on a hi
near Cassel, he gave his life. That supreme surrender was t only surrender of which Ronald Cartland would have prov capable. He was more than an example to his fellow-members he was a lesson. And to the timid souls among them his present his high nervous fortitude, rankled almost as a reproof His was a combative nature, and his eternal enemy n• what he called " the closed mind." He aroused mu transient irritation, much passing resentment, and has lc! behind him durable respect. Above all, he stood out from his contemporaries, who were so widely disillusioned and so often mute in his conviction that his theory was not only correct but also practicable. He was that amazing phenomenon: a young man e. the post-war generation, who actually believed in himself. He gate us faith. " And when you ask," he wrote, " what do we want out cx Life? That question should only be asked by you of yourself. It can be answered only by you. In other words—or written in a word—Faith."
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