PARTISAN REVIEW
against Napoleon would have made a considerable difference (perhaps not
altogether a bad one) to English literature and thought. It is stupid not
to realise that it might also have stopped the romantic movement altogether.
A hundred years ago, the intelligentsia, together with most of
the
people with whom they lived and for whom they worked, did not have to
fight. Nowadays, everyone has to take a part in the war effort, so it would
be artificial and unnatural to divorce the writer from his readers, who are
mostly conscripted, by keeping him in cotton wool. At the same time, it
does not seem satisfactory to stop him writing altogether.
Walt Whitman foresaw this problem when in
Democratic Vistas
he
outlined his idea of the Divine Literatus. As I see it, he thought of
the
writer as the forerunner of the moral and intellectual consciousness of
a
coherent and intelligent democracy. The writer should travel, witness
the
experiences of the democracy and be able to assimilate and organize
them,
according to his imaginative gift. This task is something quite different
from journalism which consists of reporting things that are not allowed
to be reported and presenting points of view and agitation which suit
the
opportunistic needs of the country at some given moment. One would
have thought that democracy at war could make effective use of writers
who supported the democratic cause, and who could state its case in long
terms which did not come up against the censorship and which contained
deeper and more resilient truths than the agitation of the moment.
If
America ever wants to appeal to the imaginative sympathy of Eng·
land, I hope that the American government will give the opportunity to
about twelve American 'literati' really to witness and to share every aspect
of American life at a moment of great strain, and then give them the time
to write what they would like about America. Make them join the army,
the Civil Defense Forces, work in the factories, by all means: but guaran·
tee them an opportunity to write.
Meanwhile I live the life of a navvy, and this gives me an oppor·
tunity, at any rate, to tell you what ordinary people in Englan.d are
think·
ing just now.
The attitu.de of the miscellaneous collection of bricklayers, builders,
navvies, clerks, commercial travellers, to whom I belong, is curious. They
accept the war as inevitable, and they wish it to be won; at the same time,
they do not think of it as their war. This is not because the war is
the
"bosses' war" (that feeling has rather disappeared since Russia came in),
but simply because it is too large and vast and horrible for them. Only
today the man standing next to me at drill said: "Ain't the business
m
Russia 'orrible? Anyway, p'rhaps it will teach ten or twelve people
m
the world to feel sorry for the sl!lughter they've caused." What is odd
about this, is that I am sure his ten or twelve people would not be exclu–
sively Germans, though perhaps three Germans would head the list.
No,
they would be the dictators, followed by one or two of our own politiciam,
followed perhaps by Laval, and then by a few big industrialists and
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