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XXVI
Habitual Anarchy

We have seen that, ever since the days of Wycliffe, the ideas which form the keystone of Liberalism have sprouted like indigenous flora in England, and their seed has been scattered over the whole of the modern world. So deep is the hold which these ideas have fastened on humanity, that they have acquired, like the tenets of a universal religion, an odour of sanctity, and one is now considered respectable, if not decent, only on condition that one professes belief in them and sternly repudiates any other political principles.
        The self-evident, apodictic nature of these ideas depends for the force of its appeal to modern man on a number of assumptions which we have examined, and all of which are fundamentally pessimistic and negative — that is to say, they deny the possibility of phenomena the existence of which Western humanity has been taught by its exceptionally unfortunate experience to doubt. In this sense they resemble the ideas which might be formed by the inmates of a Home for Incurables who, as the result of having constantly before their eyes the spectacle of disability and disease, are prepared to swear that Health, Sanity and Sweet Breath are wholly mythical.
        A typical example of this attitude is that noticed by Mr John Masters who, as we have seen, has recently told us that "Modern thought does not look kindly on strong men" (Bugles and a Tiger, 1956, Chap. V); a remark which received striking confirmation only the other day in a very silly review of Mr Dean Acheson's Sketches from Life by the popular journalist, Sir Harold Nicolson.
        Those who have read this book will know that in it the author makes no attempt to conceal his admiration of Portugal's strong man, Dr. Salazar. Now, Sir Harold Nicolson, commenting on the American's eulogy of the eminent Portuguese Statesman "who seemed to him," says the English journalist,

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"I regret to say, the possessor of a sane mind and even greater charm," then adds: "It is embarrassing for the representative of the Free World to say such things about a dictator." (The London Observer, 23.7.61).
        Why does Nicolson "regret" that to Mr. Dean Acheson, Dr. Salazar "seemed the possessor of a sane mind and even greater charm"? Why is it "embarrassing for the representative of the Free World" to express admiration for a dictator? — Surely Sir Harold Nicolson knew that admiration for Dr. Salazar and his régime was not confined to American Statesmen. Had not that eminent English diplomat, Sir David Kelly, also paid a warm tribute to the Portuguese Prime Minister? In his book, The Ruling Few (Chap. VI), Sir David tells us how impressed he was, on returning to Portugal after an absence of 18 years, by the transformation Dr. Salazar's rule had effected. Can Sir Harold Nicolson have been unaware of this?
        The fact is that in a few words I have quoted from Sir Harold Nicolson's book-review, the essence of Liberal pessimistic negativism regarding rulership is concentrated.
        If it were true that Freedom and a decent Way of Life were possible only where mob-rule prevails and flappers hardly out of their teens are able to vote at every General Election, Sir Harold Nicolson's comments on Mr. Dean Acheson's praise of Dr. Salazar would be understandable. But to us who know from the experience of centuries that this bias against strong, able men — especially in politics — has been and still is an English Liberal obsession, and the consequence of the rarity in English history when Power has been allied to wisdom and virtue; to us who have seen Anarchy spread over the greater part of the earth owing precisely to this bias, these comments in a leading Sunday journal seem, wholly deplorable.
        Yet it is unlikely that this was felt by any of the Observer's regular readers.
        In his Lords of the Equator, Lord Kinross, aware of the Liberal sentimentalism prevalent in England in his day, bitterly condemns it and throughout his book constantly blames British influence for the spread of indiscipline in Africa. (See particularly Part II, Chap. III, on the decline of discipline due to the administrative system in vogue in British Africa at the time when the book was written.) In his conclusion, Lord Kinross makes this instructive remark, which must certainly have re-

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mained unheeded by the "Establishment"; "The European need not be it Fascist to bring up the African in the way he should go. But equally he need not be a sentimental Liberal."
        The Earl of Winterton, in Orders of The Day (Chap. XXIV), has also and more recently expressed his doubts about the kind of life the British mania for democratic institutions has at last established in England itself. For in language both moderate and sober he speaks of the increasing "difficulties of every British Government answerable to a nation enjoying universal suffrage, especially since a large portion of the electorate is imperfectly fitted to understand either the doctrine or the heresy of the moment."
        As that exceptionally shrewd statesman, Joseph Chamberlain once said to A. J. Balfour, long before universal epicene suffrage had been granted (i.e. 1866): "Our misfortune is that we live under a system of government originally contrived to check the action of kings and ministers, and which meddles far too much with the executive of the country." (Chapters of Autobiography, by A. J. Balfour, Chap. XV). But had Chamberlain been expressing these views in this Age of universal epicene suffrage, he would certainly have said, not "meddles far too much", but "meddles far too much and far too ignorantly and emotionally" with the executive of the country.
        It never seems to occur to those who believe in this system of democratic control by an epicene electorate composed of all the adults in the nation, how fundamentally unfair, if not actually inhuman, it is to leave momentous decisions of State policy likely to determine the destiny of the voters themselves and of their posterity, to mobs qualified to form prudent, let alone wise, judgments about the issues placed before them. Can it be charitable to call upon people ill equipped and unused to taking a long-term view of legislative measures affecting their political and social life, to frame and implement policies of which they cannot understand or even gauge the consequences? This merciless aspect of Democracy seems altogether to have escaped the attention of all its most ardent advocates.
        In the matter of the people's character alone, is there anyone who would be prepared to say that, since the various extensions of the Franchise granted from 1918 onwards, it has improved? Is there not, on the contrary, every indication that

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it has seriously deteriorated? And would it be fair to blame the electorate themselves for having acquiesced in, if not for having actually promoted, the policies which, in hardly two generations, have destroyed their spirit of independence, undermined their rudimentary Public Spirit, ruined their self-discipline and the discipline of their children, and encouraged every kind of self-indulgence, sexual and otherwise, among them? (See Chapter X ante.)
        It is true that many of these regrettable changes have been due to other agencies than the influence of mob-majorities on legislation; and among these other agencies has been of course the prolonged absence in English life of a Tone-Setting élite. But this in itself is one of the many untoward results of Liberal misunderstandings concerning the nature of sound government.
        As to the policy of spreading this system far and wide, despite the fact that it has proved damaging in its native home, the Earl of Winterton says: "If there is a lesson to be learnt from world events of the last 25 years, it is that democratic government simply does not function in a country where there is an illiterate electorate, which has no understanding of democracy and where power falls into the hands of a tiny class of semi-educated agitators. . . . Ignoring these considerations and without sufficient preparatory steps, the Labour Government conferred self-government on the Gold Coast, and thus alarmed European opinion throughout Africa." (Op. cit., Chap XXIII).
        David Thomson is another political writer who bravely expresses his heterodox views in the teeth of the present-day members of the English "Establishment." "Many of the political difficulties of our time", he says, in Personality and Politics (Chap. 1), "have been added to rather than solved by the increased number of people who have been allowed to take an active interest in politics." Whilst in Chap. VII, he says, the democrat "must in honesty admit that only a small portion of the electorate is sufficiently well-informed to judge politics on grounds of pure reason." Later on in the book he implies that even if the electorate consisted of wizards, this would not necessarily mean that wholly desirable men and women entered Parliament. "Even democratic election," he says, "means that politics tends to fall into the hands of the ambitious, and the ambitious tend to be either vain or unscrupulous." — Why not both? (Op. cit., Chap III. i).

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        If, however, we turn to a foreign observer of the very same state of affairs which Lord Kinross, the Earl of Winterton and David Thomson criticize so adversely, we find the following summing up: "What we recognise as order to-day and express in Liberal institutions, is nothing but anarchy become a habit. We call it democracy, parliamentarianism, national government, but in fact it is the non-existence of conscious responsible authority — a government."
        And who was this caustic and clear-sighted foreigner? — None other than Oswald Spengler, the author of the Decline of the West; and the passage in question occurs in his Hour of Decision.

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