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[A "New Pioneer" Pamphlet] by Anthony M. Ludovici New Pioneer Periodicals for The English Array London 1939 It is often alleged that political systems, and even a nation's religious, social and moral convictions, arise out of its economic conditions. This is a standpoint constantly emphasised by the Communists, and is generally acceptable to all those who are inclined to lay particular stress on environmental as opposed to hereditary influences. I submit that what history teaches is rather that economic conditions, together with the religious, social and moral convictions associated with them, are pre-eminently the creation of national character, and that this national character is predominantly determined by heredity, or what is popularly known as race, and better referred to as type or stock. Further, I submit that, when once a well-defined national character has established the institutions and customs suited to its peculiar capacities, tastes and virtues, these institutions can be modified — not by moral suasion or argument, but only by a determined attack on the national character itself, which in practice means an attack on the national type or stock. In these days of loose and amateur thinking, it is too often hastily assumed that the venerable institutions and customs of a nation tend to become useless, or even obstacles in the way of progress, by the mere passage of time; as if age were in itself a destroyer of all quality except that of picturesqueness. In most European countries to-day, where this shallow belief prevails, this is the assumption; and it has been the assumption long enough to have accounted for the destruction of any number of valuable and ancient institutions, of which to-day men are beginning to feel the need once more. Only the fewest in all these nations have asked themselves, when the kennel seemed to have become too spacious and solid for the dog, whether perhaps the dog itself had not diminished in stature and vigour. Thus, in England and in Europe generally, scores of ancestral foundations have been scrapped which, there is no doubt, a healthier and more vigorous generation will one day insist on restoring to life. The people who hope to postpone sine die the restoration of these foundations, by a constant flow of new and half or quarter-baked legislation, and by centralised governmental activities constantly We, who are less pessimistic and less Liberal, therefore, look hopefully, not to the evanescence of government or of law, but certainly to the evanescence of this feverish activity of the former and of this constant stream of the latter. We believe that a healthy, happy nation is normally governed through the spontaneous and voluntary observance by the whole population of sound values, and that when values have become unsound and chaotic as they have to-day, no amount of new laws can possibly restore the health and happiness which have been lost. We believe that in the body of the nation there still remain the vestiges of its ancient character and that these vestiges will respond to sound values, provided that the leaders arise who are prepared to promulgate and uphold such values among the population. Sound values are indeed the only practical means of establishing sound conditions. Thus if we wish the character of our people to blossom forth again in all its primitive luxuriance, we must restore the only practical means by which this character can flourish. Then the constant active interference of It is part of the superstition and shortsightedness of Liberalism to suppose that a continual stream of new laws and an incessant remodelling or demolition of institutions can restore a nation's health and happiness. It is, moreover, a sign of the shallowness of Liberalism that it has always cherished the romantic hope that the identity and character of a people survive without any effort on the part of its leaders and custodians to maintain sound values. Thus Liberalism has always looked on quite unmoved at all changes, of no matter what source or kind, and superficially embraced them as Progress. It has never paused to differentiate between those changes which will develop and those which will mar the character of a nation. In all countries, therefore, Liberalism has meant: (1) The uncritical misunderstanding of all change as Progress. (2) The extension of the utmost freedom to all, in the sense of influencing, whether for good or evil, the destiny of the nation. Liberalism overlooked the elementary fact that, since only the fewest in any generation can be above existing conditions, it is only the fewest whose free influence on existing conditions can elevate them. The majority, particularly all those below parity in sanity, health and vigour, can, by freely exercising their influence on existing conditions, merely debase them. Thus (c) The acceptance of a jungle morality, which is implicit in the individualism of the Liberal position. Give the million freedom to influence the nation's destiny, and you must expect individuals to see advantage in a change which is advantageous only to themselves and their like. Their private interests will take precedence of national interests. Thus, a sort of sauve qui peut social philosophy arises, in which each is for himself and the devil is left to take the hindermost. And since the majority cannot be expected to see beyond the horizon of their own profit, there arises a bellum omnium contra omnes which is a jungle morality, under the sway of which the nation perishes. (4) The acceptance of two principles — independence and separateness — assuming the possibility of private rights in property and in judgment within a community which, by virtue of its gregariousness, relied on the very opposite principles for its survival. The consequence of these four elementary characteristics of Liberalism have everywhere been the disintegration, decay and degeneration of the societies in which they have prevailed. Liberalism has one sound and inextinguishable You cannot be responsible unless you are in some measure free. You cannot develop character unless you are free to command the circumstances of your life, and suffer the consequences, good or bad, of self-determination. Now, in no people more than in the ancient Saxons, who ultimately conquered, appropriated and civilised Britain, was this fundamental desire for freedom and independence more deeply ingrained. Following de Tourville (Histoire de la Formation Particulariste), I believe that the Saxons who civilised Britain were a particularist, separatist people, loving individual freedom above all, even to the point of making it difficult for them to establish gregarious communities. Tacitus emphasises the intensity of their love of freedom. But he also describes their independent character, their separateness, their particularism. "None of the German tribes live in cities," he says, "even individually they do not permit houses to touch each other; they live separated and scattered . . . They lay out their villages not, after our fashion, with buildings contiguous; everyone keeps a clear space round his house." Tacitus, as a patriarchal Roman, unaware (except quite vaguely) of the particularist psychology, tries to account in his own way for this strange habit of the Saxons. He explains the aloofness of their But we who know these people were particularist, and that the description given of their villages by Tacitus almost 2,000 years ago might equally have applied to every street in almost every English town only two generations ago, do not require to be told what led the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxon race to build their villages in this way. Thus, in the very kernel of the race there was this love of freedom and independence, which has given rise to the typically Anglo-Saxon slogans: "Mind your own business!" and "Each for himself: God for all!" But although this attitude contained the nobler elements of their ultimate Liberalism, we must not overlook the fact that it necessarily had a negative and misanthropic side, which at any moment might express itself a-socially and disruptively. These people were impatient of government, looked for government only in times of crisis and danger, and avoided everything in the nature of Roman centralisation. Now the history of England, from the Norman Conquest right on to the time of the Tudors and Stuarts, is really but the drama of a particularist people, congenitally inclined to separation and independence, and averse from social integration, forced against its will to form the social unit we call a nation. On the contrary! Every step towards socialisation, every victory for gregariousness as opposed to the temper of the cat that walks alone, was achieved only by a painful and gradual metamorphosis of the particularist Saxon into a man fit for society. Take the institution of Parliament! — This attempt on the part of the leaders of the nation to combine the maximum of centralisation and of interference with, and control of, the subject, with the maximum of individual influence and liberty. Continentals, particularly the French, and millions of English people who speak proudly of England's legislative body as the "Mother of Parliaments," imagine that, as an institution, it was the child of Ancient English genius, born spontaneously amid the proud and joyful acclamations of the people. But it was nothing of the sort! It was wholly alien to the particularist spirit of the Anglo-Saxon race. The idea of Parliament was as foreign as the man who first introduced it from a foreign land under a weak king (Henry III), and the very word betrays its origin. And the same remarks apply to the Church of Rome. The patriarchalism of this institution, its untiring efforts to control and organise the social and moral relations of Europe as a whole, while expecting in return contributions for its maintenance — all this was fundamentally alien to the particularism of the Anglo-Saxon genius, the essence of whose social and moral dogma is found in the motto: Each for himself! The idea that authority should dictate what God meant and that only God's appointed ministers could interpret His Word and grant Absolution; the idea that the Scriptures should not be immediately accessible to every ordinary man, and that ceremonies not indicated by Holy Script should be enforced by the Church, was intolerable to Englishmen always, and in the fourteenth century this spirit of revolt became articulate. In this manner, and in a score of other ways did the particularism of the Anglo-Saxon people manifest itself, and it was this temper of the people which it was the business of the Governments and especially of the Kings of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to socialise, humanise and, in a sense, civilise, i.e., render more fit for a harmonious life in a community. It was a matter not so much of eradicating their love of freedom and independence, as of curbing and humanising the tendency to negativism and unsociability which was its darker side. For it was this tendency to negativism and unsociability which constantly led them into that state of bellum omnium contra omnes which was ultimately to culminate in all the horrors of the Manchester School of social philosophy in centuries to come. In the early days, moreover — and this is a fact of great significance usually overlooked in considering the character of the English people — there was an element in the land (I refer to the Jews) which was by origin and habit the very kind best constituted for accentuating and confirming the particularist and negative tendencies of the people. For the Jews were the extreme particularists of the East. They Descended from the nomadic Bedouins, and bred in an area where the struggle for existence and the social philosophy of sauve qui peut were carried to the extremes of human endurance, the Jews were the last people on earth who would have been likely to help in socialising or humanising any people among whom they settled. As hereditary nomads, they were accustomed to owe allegiance and loyalty to no man. When once the nomad has packed up his domestic goods and, after having exhausted the previous oasis along his path, has moved to a fresh oasis, he feels himself and his family, however large, as a self-contained unit, free from all social or other obligations to the rest of mankind, even including the other members of his race. He is, in fact, a particularist of the most hardened type. The presence of a large community of Jews in England from the Norman Conquest to the middle of Edward I's reign was, therefore, a factor which, far from helping in the humanisation and socialisation of a people already possessed of pronounced particularist tendencies, conspired rather to intensify * The authority for these and other references to the Jews in this address, is "The Jews and the Jews in England" by Cobbett (Boswell Publishing Co., Ltd., 1938). As regards Cobbett's claim that the Jews are particularists, it is important to note that, although, in the formation of their family groups and in the organisation of their early communities, they may in their early days have acted like patriarchalists, and are indeed usually classified as such; in their reactions to the societies among which they are mere sojourners and even in their primeval psychology as nomads, they behave like particularists and lead to particularist social forms where their influence is felt. Now this was all very well so long as the socialisation of the English people had not gone to any lengths. It was all very well so long as the Royal House and its noble supporters were still, to some extent, alien, and were themselves engaged in exploiting or oppressing a conquered nation. When once, however, the King himself and his barons had become one with the people, and had begun seriously to set about socialising and civilising them, the disruptive and a-social element composed of the Jews, with all its pronounced particularist characteristics, came to be felt as something increasingly strange and intolerable, and in 1290, as we know, the Jews were expelled, not to return until 365 years later. Changes of the utmost importance occurred during these 365 years. It was a period during which it may with truth be claimed that the English people reached not only ethnic unification, but also the highest point in their culture and civilisation. Every institution which was to endure and make for the greatness of the nation, and every great man, from Chaucer to Shakespeare, was to come to life during this period, and nothing greater, or even as great, has appeared since. Under the guidance of their wise rulers — figures like Henry I, Henry II, Edward I and Edward III, and, later on, Elizabeth and the early Stuarts — the English people gradually became civilised, i.e., socialised. Their justice, through Henry II, Edward The Assize of Bread, by which the bakers were secured a fair profit while the public was protected from extortionate prices, was certainly as early as the 12th century (Henry II) if not earlier. Forestalling, i.e., bargaining with producers by middlemen before local consumers could have a chance of buying, was prohibited in the 14th century (27 Ed. III B. 33). By Henry II's time wages began to be fixed according to the price of bread, and although, after the black death, Edward III had to establish a maximum wage, Elizabeth, two hundred years later, abolished the maximum, and charged her justices with the duty of securing the labourer a sufficient wage. Usury was everywhere deprecated, and people were discouraged from taking financial advantage of another's distress. Thus gratuitous loans — i.e., loans free from interest — were usually made to members of Gilds, whether merchant or craft, who had become too poor, through what cause soever, to The Gilds, whether merchant or craft, were induced to be concerned quite as much about protecting the general public as their own members. The pursuit of quality and not of gain was the slogan, and the Church certainly fostered a love of any craft, for the sake of the craft, as opposed to the gain to be acquired through it. Thus, in all trades, there was a growing concern about excellence of workmanship and of the material used. And practices leading to the exploitation of the public were suppressed. So-called searchers were appointed by the Gilds to discover and check fraud, bad quality and dishonesty in the production of their work. Night work was forbidden, as leading to shoddy goods, and as allowing secret work — i.e., work not done under the public eye, or under the eye of other workers. In buying and selling, the giving of short weight or the selling of inferior drink or food for consumption, was severely punished, and inspectors were appointed to bring delinquents to judgment. Meanwhile, everything was done, not only to establish standardised weights and measures and Over all this socialised activity, moreover, there reigned a very keen sense of the biological values necessary for the preservation of the people's health. Towns and townsmen were objects of contempt, not only because the former were inhabited largely by middlemen and sedentary workers, but also and chiefly because, owing to the kind of work they offered, the physically unsound and inferior tended to migrate to them. The biological standard was high, and respect for sound biological specimens can be inferred from the treatment meted out to all degenerates, incurables and lepers. If sacrifice there had to be, it was the latter who were penalised and not the sound and physically desirable. As far as actual food is concerned, although Edward III prescribed the food for each class, there is not the slightest doubt that the medieval labourer was better off than the unskilled labourer of the present day, and he knew much more certainly than he does to-day to whom he owed his advantages and his protection. I am not pretending that England was a paradise in the period under consideration. I am merely trying to show how a particularist people were gradually moulded by their leaders into a nation which deprecated all the many hideous features of a bellum omnium contra omnes, and how they learnt to make their watchword National before Private Interests. Under the Tudors, this process certainly suffered Still, there were exceptions to this. Henry VII and VIII, for instance, did much to improve the condition of shipping, of harbours, and of commerce in general. Edward VI, with his Parliament, perceiving the danger of a lack of personnel for the Navy and mercantile marine, passed an Act (2 and 3 Ed. VI) for the encouragement of the fishing industry (the training, school of the Navy) and the increase of fishermen, by making it compulsory for all English people to eat fish all through Lent and twice a week throughout the year. And this measure — a typical example of National before Private Interests — was re-enacted under Elizabeth and James I, the former adding another day to the two already reserved for the eating of fish. People were not asked whether they liked or disliked fish, nor at that time could they have known how much better it was for them to eat fish than to eat meat; but the temper of the nation was such that it accepted the measure as being conducive to the good of the people as a whole. A further example of the principle — National before Private Interests, was James I's measure (1622) to enforce the use of woollen cloth instead of linen for shrouds and the lining of coffins, with a Both of these measures to-day — the Act enforcing the eating of fish and the Act enjoining the use of woollen cloth for shrouds — would be stigmatised by Liberals as "un-English" and typically Fascist or Nazi. In Elizabeth's reign all possible steps were taken to repair the damage done by her father and to ease the machinery of change which the new life of the community demanded. This involved extensive provision for the poor, the regulation of commerce and shipping, and stem resistance to the predatory spirit let loose in the country by Henry VIII. Thus Elizabeth took every possible step to control the capitalist, to prevent capital from accumulating in too few hands, and to impose, on the new, independent rich, proper duties towards the community. There was, however, growing up in the land a body of people, chiefly tradesmen, business men and the lower clergy, whose attitude of mind constituted in every way a return to the full flavour of primitive Saxon particularism. These people, known as Puritans, were the direct descendants of the Wycliffites and Lollards of the previous century who, as we have seen, were really particularists in religion. And their programme of No Popery represented the old Lollard claims of independence of the priest in religious matters, the light of private judgment in interpreting the Scriptures, and the denial of the priest's exclusive claim As England's bad luck would have it, however, Calvin's strong advocacy of personal liberty and insubordination in religion was coupled with a violent negativism towards what is known as "the flesh," and all normal human functions into the bargain. And thus, besides quickly associating themselves with any form of opposition to the Government of the day, the Puritans also assumed a bitterly hostile attitude towards everything connected with the body, whether sexual or otherwise. The human body was corrupt, said Calvin. It was through the flesh that men's spirits were imperilled — hence the extreme negativism of his followers, the Puritans. Associated with this negativism, the Puritans displayed a hardness and ruthlessness derived more from the Old than the New Testament. In their attitude towards the working masses, native races, and all who differed from them regarding religious beliefs, particularly in the observance of the Sabbath, they were merciless. Nor should it be forgotten, when considering the Calvinistic origins of English Protestantism and Puritanism, that Calvinism, with its doctrine of justification by faith alone, was essentially an un- Opposing those who believed in justification by works, they resented any expenditure on the embellishment or decoration of their places of worship — hence an attitude of suspicion towards ornamentation of all kinds; and belief and the religious life became a cheap pursuit, even in the matter of effort. This naturally appealed to the venality and parsimony of the shop-keeping and small business element in the community, for an act of faith alone secured salvation. Thus there were in the Puritan attitude all the prerequisites of a democratic ideology. Their philosophy appealed to the natural meanness of those who wished to exploit their fellows and who chafed under controlled conditions, and it appealed to those members of the governing classes who wished for a free hand, especially in their relations with the working classes. In short, it appealed to ail the latent particularism in the nation, and as such prepared the way for the rule of laisser-faire in every department of English life. Elizabeth, throughout her reign, was resolutely opposed to the Puritans. Fortunately for her, however, they were weaker in the sixteenth than in the seventeenth century, and although they caused her much annoyance, they were never able to resist her. But, with the advent of the Stuarts, and par- From the beginning Charles I set his face against the demands of this new movement. Determined to continue the policy of those kings who had protected the masses and been the gradual socialises of their particularist people, he tried to confirm the best features of medieval legislation. As regards industry, he favoured quality rather than mass production, was averse from the accumulation of too large fortunes in single hands, and refused to allow distress to be turned into a means of profit, whether to the individual or to a particular section of the population. For instance, in 1629 he made his justices come to the rescue of the Essex weavers, and forced their employers to give them better terms than those resulting from the automatic action of "free competition." After the bad harvest of 1630 he prevented all profiteering in corn at the expense of the poorer population; requested the Irish, who had not suffered any dearth, to send to England all the grain they did not absolutely need, and compelled his justices of the peace, in counties which had enough, to provide for their less fortunate neighbours. Charles, moreover, constantly interfered with trade to keep it honest. At one time he was preventing fraud in the packing of butter, at another in the drapery trade, and anon in the purveying of counterfeit jewellery. Three times he tried to suppress fraud and adulteration in the silk trade and, finally, in 1639, when all else failed, he established a Government Office where the silk was inspected, stamped and declared to be of an adequately good quality. The need for all these measures on the part of the King showed that the old values which, in the past, had placed national before private interest, were beginning to be undermined, and his efforts to restore this medieval principle no doubt infuriated the powerful Puritans. Indeed, can we wonder at the anger of venal shopkeepers, merchants and tradesmen, and of the more unscrupulous among the governing classes, when we review all the measures of Charles I's patriarchal rule — his opposition to the grasping lords and country gentry, his intolerance of the filching of the Church and poor funds by provincial magnates, his firm resolve to sustain the spirit of the working masses against those who wished to depress and oppress them, and his determination to administer justice irrespective of rank and power? For it was persons of the highest quality who were daily cited to the High Commission Court "for incontinence," or some other misdemeanour in their lives. Everywhere the primitive particularism, the primitive bellum omnium contra omnes (especially the war of the powerful against the poor and unprotected) began to become rampant again. Commercial morality sank to the lowest depths. Adulteration of food and drink began to be winked at. Fraud was no longer hunted down, and hardness and cruelty towards the masses accompanied a general spread of exploitation of the defenceless. While, as to native races, they became simply "Canaanites" whom, in the spirit of the now popular Old Testament, it was the privilege of the Puritans to oppress and enslave. Aye! They even deported men and women, boys and girls of their own kith and kin, to a life of slavery in the West Indies! Meanwhile, the Calvinistic element of hostility to the body and to the flesh, compounded with the licence everywhere allowed, not only in the food industries, but also in the conditions of labour, led to a general decline in the national health. Occupations and trades were forced on the masses without any regard for the effect they might have Accompanying this there was a marked hostility towards all the old pastimes and amusements of the people, so that their life became one long drudgery, whilst the Sabbath was made as grim as possible, in order that the working days might not appear too unattractive. Efforts were also made to force the nation and its colonies to become moral by means of legislation, and even monogamic heterosexuality itself came to be regarded as regrettable. And here we touch upon the affinity of the Puritans to the Jews who, since the death of Charles I, had been allowed to return to England, and were beginning to penetrate every department of the national life. For, not only were the Jews, as we have seen, singularly well equipped to support and intensify any particularist renaissance on English soil, but they were also inclined to abet and confirm even the Puritan's negativism to the flesh. For it must not be forgotten that the Old Testament starts out with a story of the first man and woman which might at a pinch have been conceived by Calvin himself. The shock Adam and Eve received at the spectacle of each other's nakedness after eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge is a situation typically Puritanical. For, after all, Eden was not a public park, nor was Adam a park-keeper suddenly confronted by an ardent Nudist. The two were man and wife, presumably in a primitive state, living in a It was, however, chiefly in the fundamental changes which supervened in the conception of property that the return of the Jews to England caused the most havoc. Quite unable to understand or to accept the notion of property which, by gradual and careful reforms, the rulers and legislators of the past had inculcated upon the particular 1st English people, the Jews, in their congenital particularism, naturally encouraged and intensified all those tendencies which they found already started in the nation in the 17th century — tendencies calculated to destroy the old mutualistic and gregarious view of property, and to establish the new particularist or private view of property. In this they could not help themselves; for they, at least, knew of no other form of property. Nor must we be sentimental and self-righteous about the view of property which the Puritans, allied with the Jews, finally overthrew in 17th century England. For it is not a matter of favouring the mutualistic and gregarious view of property because it is kindest, or more charitable, or more virtuous; it is rather a matter of recognising in the mutualistic and gregarious view of property merely that conception of property which alone is practical, enduring and defensible. When once we appreciate the fact that it is impossible to remove from anything that is capable of And if, in the end, all those societies which have allowed the principle of private property to harden so as to make possession absolute, have found either that the principle has to be abandoned, or that their existence is imperilled, it is not because the establishment of private property is "selfish" or "uncharitable," or "pusillanimous," but simply that it is unworkable as being founded on an unnatural conception of possessive rights within a community. * Naturally, however, the Jew, the congenital nomad, could not understand this. To him all the machinery of the Middle Ages for keeping property to a large extent gregarious and mutualistic, either by means of reciprocal services or other duties and responsibilities, were utterly incomprehensible. And even now, when everywhere he sees about him the havoc caused to European societies by the acceptance of the nomad's or particularist's view of property as something possessed absolutely, the Jew cannot see the remedy or the way out of the chaos he and the Puritan ideologists have created. He can understand only absolute, or private property, with an arbitrary scale of taxation, which amounts merely to confiscation and not to the gregarious or mutualistic organisation of property; or else he can understand the complete negation of private pro- * See the author's "Sanctity of Private Property" (Heath Cranton, 1932) for a fuller discussion of this question. I cannot claim that Charles I, the last of the monarchs of England to make a stand against the forces of the new, or modern age, foresaw all this. But he and his supporters fell, and he ultimately died in a struggle with the faction who were ultimately responsible for all that we now know as latter-day muddle, disintegration and anarchy. Although, however, he died a self-professed "martyr of the people," those of his prominent and influential supporters who survived him, attempted the continuation of his beneficent policies, and in so doing, became known as the party connected with the Crown. Thus began the Tory tradition of supporting the Crown and championing the popular cause, whilst the Whigs (as doctrinal descendants of the Puritans) became associated with opposition to the Crown and upholders of that spurious freedom known as Democracy, the secret of which was that it relieved the rulers of all responsibility to the masses, although giving the masses no practical means of protecting themselves. This may seem paradoxical. Historically and philosophically, however, it is self-evident. The inevitable ignorance, impressionability and emotionalism of the electorate as a whole has always The philosophy of politics shows, moreover, that since democracy was a spectacular failure, even when it was direct and genuine — as the Greeks who invented it proved — it can hardly be expected to succeed when, owing to its present unwieldy numbers, the electorate is at the mercy of Press propaganda and the wiles of demagogues for its information, and expresses its will only indirectly through representatives elected, not for their credit in the community, or for their wisdom, but for the political programme to which they have subscribed. With the chimera, "Freedom" constantly held as a mirage before the eyes of the people, it was no difficult matter, therefore, for the traditional Particularist Party — appearing either as Puritans, Whigs, or, finally, Liberals, to win at least that form of liberty which consisted in their having a free hand, whether in their financial, commercial or industrial rackets; and with the Jews to support them both financially and doctrinally it is not surprising that the mood and methods of England during the last 250 years have become steadily more Particularist and Liberal. For, whether we look at the excesses of the Manchester School of laisser-faire economists in the 19th century, or at the present condition of the country, where the only principle adopted towards property is to confiscate it more and more, as if the task of restoring to it its former gregarious The accretions English Liberalism received from such English and French thinkers as Locke, Rousseau and Bentham only augmented its specious plausibility; they never succeeded in correcting its fundamental unsoundness. Locke's false assumption regarding the supposed equality of mankind — an assumption which became axiomatic to Rousseau and the French Revolutionaries; Bentham's false assumptions regarding the contentment and happiness necessarily secured by Democracy (for, since each man is the best judge of his own interests and can injure none but himself, the cumulative result of universal suffrage must be universal bliss!); Rousseau's false assumption that man, being born good, the evils of society must be due to environment (i.e., the conditions imposed on mankind by its rulers) — all these assumptions, puerile as they may seem to us now, became, and are still, powerful buttresses in the Liberal position, and they greatly added to the sinister strength of the original Puritan sophistry. At any rate, they represented a politico-romantic dogma which continues to bind millions under its spell; because those of us who would be prepared to enlighten the nation regarding the spuriousness of the whole Liberal ideology have our voices drowned by the deafening uproar of deliberately devised counter-attractions. (a) The denial of hereditary rights and of the very fact of heredity as a biological process of quality-transmission. (b) The denial of the value of good blood and good stock, an attitude which did but aggravate the havoc already wrought in the nation's health and stamina by the Puritan contempt of bodily considerations. (c) The unbalanced advocacy of extreme humanitarianism as a means of patching up the damage done to the masses by poverty, ill-health and the general neglect of bodily concerns. It must be obvious that the whole of this philosophy, of which I have given but the barest outlines, together with the spirit of rapacity and profiteering that accompanied it, was neither resisted nor favourably modified by the increasing Jewish element in the population. On the contrary! Even the hostile attitude towards heredity rights and influences, which was really alien to the ancient beliefs of the Jews, found favour in their eyes when once they were securely settled in England. And this was so, not because the Jew had really ceased to believe in heredity, but because hereditary institutions always carry with them positions of honour, trust and power, together with titles and privileges, which cannot be bought, i.e., things regarding which money is of no avail. The money-power of the Jews, therefore, necessarily associated itself with the Liberals in their attack on heredity. For if privileges and titles, The isolation of the King from the people and their genuine concerns, the denigration of aristocracy, the ultimate establishment of financial success as the only measure of quality in the land, the elevation of the House of Commons to the only legislative power, and the shifting of all responsibility but of no real control to the ignorant, voting masses by means of universal suffrage — these five ideals, present to the minds of the leading Puritans of the 17th century, were ultimately realised by Liberalism during the 19th and 20th centuries, and now they may be said to have become part of the very flesh and blood of the whole country. Congenital Liberalism, which Gilbert hinted at as a joke, may be said to have become a reality. It is certainly much more prevalent than many suppose, particularly among women. And although the millions who suffer from it fondly imagine that their views and their attitude are the spontaneous products of their own private cogitations, and speak and argue as if their Liberal persuasions had been reached by assiduous application to the problems and data of politics, they are really little more than the victims of their own infected atmosphere which, from the nursery to the university, does nothing else Thus England is now faced with a gigantic task of restoration and reconstruction — a task so formidable that it eludes the average man entirely and inspires even those who have perceived it with doubts and misgivings. It is a matter of restoring real liberty (i.e., a genuine economic status) to the working masses, recovering the health and stamina of the nation, calling a halt to uncontrolled humanitarianism both in the hearts and the institutions of the people, reviving the oldest and most essential industry (agriculture) in the country, re-establishing the old mutualistic or gregarious attitude towards property (the only attitude that works), and building up a fresh class of leaders, who can be trusted and will inspire their followers. It is the belief of the leaders and members of the English Array that there still survive in this country sufficiently large numbers of people who, besides being living shrines of the old humanised and socialised sentiments and habits of England, are still healthy and vigorous enough to carry through this task of restoration and reconstruction with an irresistible impetus against the forces of Liberalism. But — and this lends a fantastic feature to our hopes — we of the English Array must always bear in mind that in confronting this essential and formidable task, we stand almost alone amid a population of over forty millions. We also stand together to accomplish this task at the eleventh In this sense, our ambitions and our programme may seem ridiculously overweening and pretentious. They may, at least to the outside world, appear to be due to an exorbitant over-estimation of our capacities and powers. If, however, we bear in mind that it is not numbers or voices that ultimately count, as Liberals and democrats would have us believe, but only the firmness of purpose and energy of the individual members of a militant body, however, small; if, moreover, we take heart from the spectacle of what other once contemptible minorities have done — bodies such as the National Socialists of Germany, the Fascists of Italy, and even the Russian Bolshevists themselves, not to mention the handful of Jews whose re-admission to this country Cromwell granted in 1655 — we shall find less cause either for despondency or self-contempt, and gather confidence and strength from the reflection that only that fight is lost which is abandoned, and that if any cause is upheld with passion and single-mindedness, it must ultimately prevail, even when congenital English Liberals and international manipulators, Jew or Gentile, constitute the organised enemy. |
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