MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
IWAS talking the other evening to two men upon the future of 1 British politics. Neither of them was a politician, but each of them was eminent in his own profession. One of them had been educated at a grammar school, gained a scholarship at Oxford, and been moulded by the Fabians of the 1912 period, when Socialism appeared so inevitable, so cultured and so right. The other was a Wykehamist and a scholar, who combined a theoretical, though sincere, sympathy for the suppressed classes with a fastidious horror of ignorance, either in high or low places, whether among the masses or the few. The thoughts and feelings of each of them had been shaped by the old, unquestioned assumption that " democracy " meant government by consent rather than by com- pulsion ; that the best method, on the whole, of ascertaining and organising that consent was adult suffrage, expressing itself through the two-party system ; and that a Government which adopted this method was a " good " or " democratic" Government, whereas any system which violated this theory was "undemocratic," and therefore "bad." They were honest and well-informed, intelli- gent and alert ; the edges of their minds were sharp and strong ; and yet, as we sat there, conscious of the sad mess which democracy had made of itself since 1920, conscious of eight major defeats in three years of war, conscious, above all, of the pincers pinching in Russia and Egypt, our minds became clouded by the mud of doubt. Supposing that the conception of political democracy, which had shone so brightly in 1830, was, in fact, a fiction no less illusory as that of the divine right of kings? Supposing that the masses were, in fact, too ignorant, too lethargic or too selfish to give enlightened consent? Supposing that the cynics were correct in contending that Britain had been an oligarchy until 1921, and that once we became a democracy we lost all sense of direction, purpose and control? Supposing that Spengler and Pareto were right after all?
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It was what we in this island call a summer evening, in the sense that the rain had ceased for the moment and the thermometer stood above 5o degrees. The pods of the laburnum hung green and violet in the waning sunshine, and a thrush shouted gaily at us as it pre- pared itself for bed. We sat out there by the tin table in the garden, trying to persuade ourselves that we were clear-sighted, confident and warm. We were agreed that victory would one day be ours. This war we agreed, was a mechanical war, and in the end our ioint resources would give us mechanical superiority by air and sea and land. We agreed that the day would come next year or in two years, or in three years, or in four years, when we should make a bonfire of the black-out curtains and dispense food and justice to the world with benevolence and strength. We were cheered by Mr. Eden's speech; we were even more cheered by the speech of Mr. Cordell Hull. Europe would rise against the oppressor; the little Adolfs of this world would scuttle off to Switzerland or Brazil; Lord Woolton would be created Earl of Windermere; and " democracy," with the assistance of the Kremlin and the White House, would resume her triumphant reign. We knew all that. The future history of the. world seemed to shape itself on not uncertain lines. But when we came to examine the immediate or the ultimate future of British politics we were forced to confess that none of us had any clear ideas at all. What was to be the fate of the present Parliament, or what that of the present alignment of parties? We were aware that the factors of which today we knew the shape and weight would not prove the decisive, or even the operative, factors ; whereas the elements from which the new forces would be formed were at this stage beyond even conjecture. We did not know.
* * * * In 1912 it had all seemed so inevitable and so easy. With the spread of education the working classes would come to learn their ourt needs and power. Gradually, while in no way violating the Principle of consent or acquiescence, while at no point resorting to compulsion, our national good sense would lead us to create a more common standard of living and opportunity, and we should by a process ot evolution attain to a perfectly balanced economic
and political order. We admitted that these bright hopes of our boyhood had been founded upon certain fallacies. It was a fallacy to suppose that the spread of popular education would provide the State with a proportionately greater number of people possessing an alert interest in, and therefore a desire radically to reform, existing conditions: at the time, for instance, when our older universities were reserved for the propertied classes the percentage of the intellectually alert was about 6 per cent. of the whole ; now that almost half the undergraduates came from schools other than the larger public schools this percentage of 6 per cent. was, so the dons said, still maintained. It had been an axiom among the intellectual Socialists of the 1912 period to assume that most of our economic ills were attributable to the capitalist system, and yet today we were coming to realise that private profit was but an incident in the wider problem of supply and demand and that over-production creates unemployment whether the sources of pro- duction be owned by individuals or by the State. We used to assume when we were undergraduates that the phrase " vested interests" referred only to the propertied classes, whereas we have since learnt that many of the more obdurate ot vested interests are those established by the Unions. We had believed that one of the main causes of war was the private manufacture of armaments, yet we now realised the bitter fact that no private armament industry could ever have created a war-equipment such as the State-controlled industry introduced by Hitler after 1933. We had believed in 1912 that a slight adjustment of political theory and power would solve the problem of man and the machine ; we now know that this problem was so terrible and vast that it exceeded the mental and moral capacity of the ordinary man. And yet if the ordinary man could not either understand or accept the necessities of the future, then what would happen to democracy? We stirred uneasily on our chairs, conscious that we had felt upon our cheeks the wind of the wings of Fascism.
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I refuse to surrender to such pessimism, nor shall I ever admit that Fascism (which is tyranny) is the sole alternative to muddle. We have acquired in the course of centuries the reputation of political genius. I believe that reputation to be well-deserved. If we define that genius merely as a gift for inventing a compromise between conflicting interests, then indeed there would be cause for dismay. The conflict between national and international interests which is bound to arise after, and even during, this war will be too acute for any easy compromise. Our political genius is in truth of an order which transcends mere interests ; it is a gift, such as no other race has possessed to the same degree, of adjusting thought to feeling. The German democrats failed because their feelings be- came more potent than their thoughts ; the French democrats failed (if only for the moment) because their thoughts outran their feelings ; we may succeed, even in the post-war world, because of that deep blend of thought and feeling which we call " political instinct." I do not know what will be the future of British politics. It may be that the present coalition between Right and Left will continue for some years ; it may be that a General Election will give us an extreme Socialist government; it may be even that there will be a reaction against all forms of planning and control, and that we shall be faced for a while with an administration pledged to economic liberalism. We cannot foretell the mood of the electorate, whether it will be one of exhaustion or of enterprise ; we cannot tell how soon younger blood can be injected into the party machines. It may be that the electorate will accept ruthless rationalisation as something "Russian " and therefore nice ; or regard it as some- thing " German " and therefore horrid. But I believe that when the dust of war has settled upon the ruins of past catch-words we shall find that our political genius will again assert itself, and that we shall show the world that we can achieve an economic revolution without tyranny even as in the past we achieved a political revolution without chaos.
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