AN ESSENTIAL TOWARDS NATIONAL HARMONY. [To THE EDITOR OF THE
" SPECTATOR:1 SIR,—There is one circumstance in connexion with our class and industrial troubles which I have not as yet seen mentioned in the discussion which is now taking place on the subject in the Press and elsewhere, though its neglect must inevitably render futile all attempts permanently to allay those troubles. I refer to that habit of taking it for granted that our upper and lower classes must necessarily be in all things antagonistic which has now 'become so generally prevalent amongst us. There is no need to speed time here in considering hoist or where this habit originated, or in apportioning the blame for its origin between the parties. What immediately concerns us is the fact that until .it has been got rid of amongst both our upper and our lower classes they will never be able to come to any real agreement on any subject what- ever. It is obviously for the upper classes to make the first move; and much depends on their realization or not of their responsi- bility in the matter. For it is the personal factor which has now come to count the most in our class and industrial problems. Either our lower classes are to be left, as they are being left now, with no one to talk intimately to them, and with whom they can talk intimately, but the demagogues of the I.L.P. or B.S.P. type, or they 'must once more be given opportunities of obtaining that guidance and counsel from the upper classes which, as any one who has had much to do with them knows, they at heart really prefer. If, then, the upper classes will come down off their present pedestal, if they will disabuse themselves of their present fatuous conception of " the people " as something entirely inferior to and apart from themselves, and will set themselves to re-establish that friendly understanding which obtained of old between the classes, they can yet save the situation. If, on the other hand, they persist in sitting aloft, like the gods on Olympus, caring nothing for the turmoil beneath them, nor for the crash to follow, they will not only be rendering great disservice to their country, but they will find, when the crash does come, the greatest sufferers by it in themselves.
I am just now engaged in starting a movement for the promo- tion of those better relations between our upper and lower classes which, as I have here endeavoured to make clear, are so essential to our internal peace and unity as a nation. If any of your readers would care to know more about it I shall be happy to send them particulars, together with a pamphlet in which I have set out my ideas on the subject in greater detail.—I am, Sir, &c.,
123 St. George's Road, S.W. 1. G. NUGENT BANJOS. [The spirit of our correspondent's appeal is excellent, but we absolutely and totally deny his facts. In the first place, we see none of the signs of arrogant and foolish isolation which he depicts. That attitude we should have said vanished long before the war. The last cobweb went with the first guns of 1914. As proof we may take the almost entire abandonment of the patron- izing and irrelevant phrases " upper " and " lower " classes, which, to our astonishment, are used—no doubt by a slip of the pen—in Mr. Nugent Bankes's letter. Rich and poor, educated and uneducated, such distinctions there must be even in the freest democracy, and none is freer than ours; but "upper " and " lower " are impossible survivals when political equality is es complete as it now is.—ED. Spectator.]
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