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National pride A summary of A. M. Ludovici's address at the Surfleet Camp, 28th August, 1937 The Quarterly Gazette of the English Array 1, 1937, pp. 2–3 - p. 2 - Ludovici pointed out that when modern Englishmen contemplated the Union Jack, or heard the words "England" or "English" used with an emotional appeal in political speeches, ideas were suggested which far too often bore but little relation to a concrete reality. Indeed, it was quite usual in such circumstances tor the average inhabitant of these islands to be content with a mere figment, a mere illusion. The populations of London, Manchester, Sheffield and Liverpool were forgotten, together with the ugly truth that such populations now compose the majority of Englishmen. The activities of these giant cities, their Stock Exchanges, factories, banks and insurance offices, with the qualities they fostered, were also forgotten, and a type was pictured (rather like the conventional John Bull of the Punch Cartoons) and placed in a setting of waving cornfields, green hills and nestling red-roofed cottages, which bore so little resemblance to the actual facts, and represented such a small and rapidly vanishing element in the nation as to bo almost a fiction.         If such a fictitious picture were formed in the average Englishman's mind by the sight of the Union Jack, and the sound of the words "English" and "England," it meant that the majority were pure romantics, and that the emotions provoked by thoughts of the Home Country were perfectly worthless. Ludovici wondered how many of those present could be aware of the fundamental changes in English values which would be necessary in order to restore to the ideas usually suggested by the British flag some of their bygone reality. He wondered how many of those present would have the realism and courage to accept the values that had produced the type and the setting of the fast-vanishing ideal Englishman, and would have the energy to destroy the values that had produced the modern Englishmen of London and Manchester, together with most of their activities. He then described, by a few brief glimpses into the past, how completely not merely the appearance, but also the habits of Englishmen had changed, and how frequently in these corrupt days an attitude or an action was stigmatized as "un-English" which in England's heroic days was most characteristically national.         He pointed out how values, as the basis of conduct, were the most important factors in human life. Values were rulings concerning good and evil, and, therefore, all action all human character, depended on them. Although most people were more or less unconscious of the source of the values governing their conduct — for they picked them up from the air they breathed, in the nursery, at their parents' table, at school and in the homes of friends — it was values that made or unmade nations. If it were desirable to destroy a nation, no better means could be devised than to corrupt its values. If it were desirable to regenerate a nation, all that was necessary was to purge its values of corruption. That was why the most practical programme for Englishmen to-day was a transvaluation of values — i.e., a demonetization of current corrupt values, and a setting up in their stead of a table of sane and healthy rules of conduct.         Such a transvaluation was by no means an easy task, because everywhere it would be opposed by men and women who would advance some of their deepest childhood beliefs against it. But it was a task with which the English Array, as a political body, was exceptionally well constituted to cope, and it was certainly the only measure capable of restoring reality to those feelings of pride and self-congratulation which the Englishman - p. 3 - like to feel when contemplating his flag. Any less drastic political programme, any programme which would spare the corrupt prejudices of the sick urbanite, now the prevalent type of modern England, could merely satisfy those romantics who were content with a Wardour Street or Fancy-Dress Ball view of their native land, and who imagined that because they still had their Lord Mayor's Show and their Guy Fawkes' Day, that the once superb institutions of their country were sufficiently safeguarded.

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