FROM ENGLAND
73
it is this personal relationship which is important, that the quick centre
of living change is within the individual person, and is a matter of being,
of growth. At any rate, it is obvious that in war time at least all political
activity goes by the board. Those revolutionaries who have not joined in
the general smash-up are left with nothing on their hands but themselves
and their neighbours.
If
there is a new kind of life in this country after
the war which is not totalitarian, it will, I think, be a life brought round
to a new concreteness through a realisation of personal responsibility. The
era of politics, when we could shelve our own personal problems, and
feel righteous by trying to solve the problems of society, I feel, is over.
As I have not seen
PARTISAN REVIEW
for nearly .two years, I do not
know how you are responding to the situation, and I am eagerly waiting
for my wife to bring back the copy she has recovered from Winchmore
Hill. I suppose, in England, we are a bit nearer the focus of change than
you in America. From what very little I know of America I gather the
impression that the country is just being demoralised, as we were in the
years before the war. But I am sure you are providing a centre of morality
for the educated intelligence of America.
Kir.dest wishes,
Yours,
D.
s.
SAVAGE
licholas Moore
vs.
George Orwell
Sirs,
Cambridge, England
August 25, 1941.
Apropos of your questionnaire and
Horizon's
questionnaire and the
answer thereto. Firstly I'd like to say that I think the politics of your
paper are far superior to
Horizon's,
and that that undoubtedly accounts in
part, as you suggest, for the fact that your articles come out better than
Horizon's
and your stories and poems less well. The obviously amateurish
politics of
Horizon
can scarcely appeal to any of the intellectuals who
read it for its literature; for, apart from the fact that no doubt its politics
as such are not those of its readers, the political articles compare very
poorly in intelligence to those in the P.R.
This letter arises from your July-August issue, which I obtained
through
Horizon,
and from the fact that I'm interested in (a) literature
(especially poetry) and (b) politics (especially your kind: the partisan
nature of your review gives it a value that
Horizon
cannot have). Con·
sidering the partisan nature of your politics I was very surprised to see
that you had a London Letter from George Orwell, an omniverous and
omniscient writer whom I greatly suspect. No doubt he writes well. He
is
extremely plausible, but are not his politics as much at variance with
yours as are
Horizon's?
The impression that he gives in his London Let-
