A Commentary

The death of A. R. Orage remains the most important event and the most fitting to commemorate in this commentary. For a time I thought that everything to be said had been said by the writers who contributed to the obituary number (November 15th) of The New English Weekly. Seldom has a more remarkable tribute appeared in a less public way; a dozen or more of the writers were men who should be able to command space in The Times for any public letter they wanted to write – but I cannot think that any of the writers could have written quite as they did, except to an audience whose sympathy and understanding were assured. But on rereading the memorials, including my own, I have some second thoughts which I should like to put on record.

I have not a copy of Readers and Writers, or a file of The New Age, to which to refer, but unless my memory is quite at fault, I think that my assertion that Orage was ‘the best literary critic of that time in London’ requires precision. One kind of literary sensibility is that of the man who appears to have been waiting for that which is new and good and right in art, who is in some sort prepared for it before it arrives; to whom it appears to come as the missing piece in a puzzle almost solved. This exquisite fitness for new art was not Orage’s quality; indeed, I suspect that sometimes Orage recognised new literary art not by inspection, but rather by inference from his personal impression of the man who wrote it. I cannot recall, in Readers and Writers, any startling recognition of novelty. What I do recall is that when faced with authority or reputation and success, Orage was never distracted; and that he could penetrate quite simply and unpretentiously to the heart of the moral rottenness, or intellectual dishonesty and turpitude, of the most acclaimed authors; that he was the enemy of pretence and stupidity. And I recall a style which was as far from that of a Times leader as it was near to the essentials of good prose. I say that [261] Orage was primarily a moralist; but to say that he was a moralist is not to say that he was a moralist instead of being a critic of literature. He was that necessary and rare person, the moralist in criticism; not the inquisitor who tries to impose (his) morals upon literature, but the critic who perceives the morals of literature, and who recognises that intellectual dishonesty, laziness and confusion are cardinal sins in literature.

Having spoken of Orage as a moralist in criticism leads me to my second point. Several of the memorial writers with whom I am more or less in sympathy, deplored (as I did myself, though less openly than some) Orage’s preoccupation with certain forms of mysticism. Perhaps my own attitude is suggestive of the reformed drunkard’s abhorrence of intemperance; at any rate I deprecate Orage’s mysticism as much as anyone does. Yet, while it was something that I think should be opposed if he were still alive, it is something that I think we should, in a fashion, accept now that he is dead. Without a streak of other-worldliness which was responsible for these aberrations, Orage would not have occupied the place that he occupied and still occupies. Had he been a Catholic, accepting a Christian mysticism with its reservations and safeguards, he could not have occupied that place either; for that denomination would have frightened away many who needed to be attracted and instructed in social doctrines as far as their prejudices would permit. Had he been a Catholic his mysticism would have repelled; as that of an irresponsible religious adventurer, his mysticism was merely smiled at. It may have attracted some of the young, and it did not gravely affect the mature. And it had its effect. For without this restless desire for the absolute, Orage would have done little more than half a dozen men who survive him could do; he would have been merely a reasonable persuader towards the reasonable revolution. As it is, people who advocate monetary reform are accused of being timid compromisers, of wishing to save their middle-class skins as economically as possible, and are taunted with their unwillingness to immolate their [262] souls before the altar of the âme collective. No one could accuse Orage of the obscure mind to avoid, or the weak heart to refuse, any sacrifice that might lead to the real good.

It is hardly excessive to say that to-day, everyone who thinks, and everyone who feels, is in some way a ‘revolutionist’. Of good revolutionists, there are two kinds, distinguished by the end from which they start. There are those who are impatient with human stupidity; these begin by wanting some kind of monetary reform; their imagination is haunted by the spectre of coffee burnt, wheat dumped into the sea, herrings ploughed into the soil, etc. And there are those who begin from the other end, who talk, in France, of le spirituel, or with us (I am sorry to say) of ‘change of heart’. Orage did a good deal to hold the two together. He saw that any real change for the better meant a spiritual revolution; and he saw that no spiritual revolution was of any use unless you had a practical economic scheme. What we need to remember is Orage’s mediating position, and we need to work as if he were still here to mediate.

We are really, you see, up against the very difficult problem of the spiritual and the temporal, the problem of which the problem of Church and State is a derivative. The danger, for those who start from the temporal end, is Utopianism; settle the problem of distribution – of wheat, coffee, aspirin or wireless sets – and all the problems of evil will disappear. The danger, for those who start from the spiritual end, is Indifferentism; neglect the affairs of the world and save as many souls out of the wreckage as possible. Sudden in this difficulty, and in pity at our distress, appears no one but the divine Sophia. She tells us that we have to begin from both ends at once. She tells us that if we devote ourselves too unreservedly to particular economic remedies, we may only separate into minute and negligible chirping sects; sects which will have nothing in common except the unexamined values of contemporary barbarism. And she tells us, that if we devote our attention, as do some of our French friends, to le spirituel, we may attain only a feeble approximation to [263] catholicism, and a feeble approximation to Guild Socialism.

When I say ‘our French friends’ I mean something more than a poster of the Southern Railway. I mean not only that England and France are the ‘inevitable allies’, but that their thought should complete each other. In practical suggestions for the reorganisation of society we have a great deal to offer the French, who do not appear to know the work of any of the important English economists during the last thirty years. And on the more theoretic side they have a great deal to offer us.1 The examination of the implications of the âme collective in Demain la France is a valuable piece of work. And the more France and England become isolated together as ‘Western’, in distinction from ‘Central’ Europe, the more attentively should they study their common problems.

One difference between the ‘economic’ and the ‘spiritual’ revolution is this, that while the spiritual by itself cannot hope to affect directly any but a small spiritual élite, which must be perpetually recruited anew, the economic revolution is certain to affect society very deeply, to affect the relations of man with man. Orage was, I am sure, quite aware that the kind of economic changes which he wished to see brought about, might work more radical changes in society than any of the revolutions which our time has seen. But we cannot assume that the changes resulting from an economic revolution, however excellent the economic system in principle, will automatically be all for the good. You are certain of some change, but you cannot predict all the consequences. To say nothing of the possibility, to which we should all be wide awake, of revolutions being side-tracked, manipulated, exploited and degraded – even the probability that they will be – you cannot leave everything to even the most perfect machine. At some point human nature, unchanged in its fundamental passions and weaknesses, will be handling the [264] controls. The difficult effort is that to expect neither too much nor too little of the changes which it is possible to operate directly upon society.

I am by no means sure that Orage kept this balance perfectly; indeed, I do not see how the particular kind of religious enthusiasm by which he was animated could have provided him with the necessary measures. Nevertheless, the religious passion which inspired him, and which is evident throughout even his notes on the Stalin–Wells conversation, cannot rightly be belittled or ignored. That is what put him in a central position, and made possible...