expression of mystical profundity.
"They've lit up a civilisation and vanished, to give place to
darkness again. Now the modern state doesn't mean to go back to
darkness again-and so it's got to keep its light burning." I went
on to attack the present organisation of our schools and
universities, which seemed elaborately designed to turn the well-
behaved, uncritical, and uncreative men of each generation into the
authoritative leaders of the next, and I suggested remedies upon
lines that I have already indicated in the earlier chapters of this
story…
So far I had the substance of the club with me, but I opened new
ground and set Crupp agog by confessing my doubt from which party or
combination of groups these developments of science and literature
and educational organisation could most reasonably be expected. I
looked up to find Crupp's dark little eye intent upon me.
There I left it to them.
We had an astonishingly good discussion; Neal burst once, but we
emerged from his flood after a time, and Dayton had his interlude.
The rest was all close, keen examination of my problem.
I see Crupp now with his arm bent before him on the table in a way
we had, as though it was jointed throughout its length like a
lobster's antenna, his plump, short-fingered hand crushing up a
walnut shell into smaller and smaller fragments. "Remington," he
said, "has given us the data for a movement, a really possible
movement. It's not only possible, but necessary-urgently
necessary, I think, if the Empire is to go on."
"We're working altogether too much at the social basement in
education and training," said Gane. "Remington is right about our
neglect of the higher levels."
Britten made a good contribution with an analysis of what he called
the spirit of a country and what made it. "The modern community
needs its serious men to be artistic and its artists to be taken
seriously," I remember his saying. "The day has gone by for either
dull responsibility or merely witty art."
I remember very vividly how Shoesmith harped on an idea I had thrown
out of using some sort of review or weekly to express and elaborate
these conceptions of a new, severer, aristocratic culture.
"It would have to be done amazingly well," said Britten, and my mind
went back to my school days and that ancient enterprise of ours, and
how Cossington had rushed it. Well, Cossington had too many papers
nowadays to interfere with us, and we perhaps had learnt some
defensive devices.
"But this thing has to be linked to some political party," said
Crupp, with his eye on me. "You can't get away from that. The
Liberals," he added, "have never done anything for research or
literature."
"They had a Royal Commission on the Dramatic Censorship," said
Thorns, with a note of minute fairness. "It shows what they were
made of," he added.
"It's what I've told Remington again and again," said Crupp, "we've
got to pick up the tradition of aristocracy, reorganise it, and make
it work. But he's certainly suggested a method."
"There won't be much aristocracy to pick up," said Dayton, darkly to
the ceiling, "if the House of Lords throws out the Budget."
"All the more reason for picking it up," said Neal. "For we can't
do without it."
"Will they go to the bad, or will they rise from the ashes,
aristocrats indeed-if the Liberals come in overwhelmingly?" said
Britten.
"It's we who might decide that," said Crupp, insidiously.
"I agree," said Gane.
"No one can tell," said Thorns. "I doubt if they will get beaten."
It was an odd, fragmentary discussion that night. We were all with
ideas in our minds at once fine and imperfect. We threw out
suggestions that showed themselves at once far inadequate, and we
tried to qualify them by minor self-contradictions. Britten, I
think, got more said than any one. "You all seem to think you want
to organise people, particular groups and classes of individuals,"
he insisted. "It isn't that. That's the standing error of
politicians. You want to organise a culture. Civilisation isn't a
matter of concrete groupings; it's a matter of prevailing ideas.
The problem is how to make bold, clear ideas prevail. The question
for Remington and us is just what groups of people will most help
this culture forward."
"Yes, but how are the Lords going to behave?" said Crupp. "You
yourself were asking that a little while ago."
"If they win or if they lose," Gane maintained, "there will be a
movement to reorganise aristocracy-Reform of the House of Lords,
they'll call the political form of it."
"Bailey thinks that," said some one.
"The labour people want abolition," said some one. "Let 'em," said
Thorns.
He became audible, sketching a possibility of action.
"Suppose all of us were able to work together. It's just one of
those indeterminate, confused, eventful times ahead when a steady
jet of ideas might produce enormous results."
"Leave me out of it," said Dayton, "IF you please."
"We should," said Thorns under his breath.
I took up Crupp's initiative, I remember, and expanded it.
"I believe we could do-extensive things," I insisted.
"Revivals and revisions of Toryism have been tried so often," said
Thorns, "from the Young England movement onward."
"Not one but has produced its enduring effects," I said. "It's the
peculiarity of English conservatism that it's persistently
progressive and rejuvenescent."
I think it must have been about that point that Dayton fled our
presence, after some clumsy sentence that I decided upon reflection
was intended to remind me of my duty to my party.
Then I remember Thorns firing doubts at me obliquely across the
table. "You can't run a country through its spoilt children," he
said. "What you call aristocrats are really spoilt children.
They've had too much of everything, except bracing experience."
"Children can always be educated," said Crupp.
"I said SPOILT children," said Thorns.
"Look here, Thorns!" said I. "If this Budget row leads to a storm,
and these big people get their power clipped, what's going to
happen? Have you thought of that? When they go out lock, stock,
and barrel, who comes in?"
"Nature abhors a Vacuum," said Crupp, supporting me.
"Bailey's trained officials," suggested Gane.
"Quacks with a certificate of approval from Altiora," said Thorns.