[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—The contributions to this
discussion which have so far appeared in The Spectator do not seem to take us very much further than the unpractical answer given by Jesus of Nazareth to the highly respectable young man " with interests in the City," of whom one of your contributors must have strongly reminded some of your readers.
That reply was " Go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor . . . . and come and follow Me."
I remember discussing this answer with Graham Wallas just about sixty years ago in Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Wallas suggested the appalling results of such a proceeding in a judaean village. We also contrasted it with the then dominant principles of the science of Charity Organisation. I remember :suggesting that the reply might have been given ironically, indicating that there was no scope in an orthodox economic society for the aspirations of young men such as that.
At a later date, Jesus seems to have desired to indicate rather more uncompromisingly what it was that He really meant.
He asked Simon Peter—" Simon, Son of Jonas, lovest thou Me ? " Peter answered Him " Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee." Jesus said to him " FEED MY LAMES."
That is the answer which has been accepted for centuries by missionary Christianity, and has :teen recently vividly emphasised in the writings of Albert Schweizer in regard to contact with primitive races. In another form it appears in Mr. T. S. Eliot's paraphrase of " WHAT THE THUNDER SAID."
Datta : " What have we given ?
My friend, blood shaking ray heart, The awful daring of a moment's surrender . . . . By this, and this only, we have existed."
The synthesis of the Capitalist System which produced that agreeable milieu in which so many of us, like Mr. Wells' Blettsworthy, were complacently nurtured, does not in fact, it is to be feared, offer any satisfactory middle course between acceptance of its conventions and co-operation in their destruc- tion and supersession. When its protagonists have completed their own mutual destruction on the lines they are now so vigorously pursuing, the problem for the young and able- bodied of what are now the Middle Classes and parasites of that system will be, how to keep themselves fed. The most practical advice I could give to a young man who wished to save his life for a future in a more tolerable society, would be, that he should betake himself to wherever that problem is being most consciously and intelligently studied ; which appears at present to be in the U.S.S.R.—I am, Sir, yours faithfully,
OLIVIER.
Wychwood, Selsey Avenue, Bognor Regis.
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