THE WRITER AND SOCIAL STRATEGY
181
England were divided over questions like Catholic Emancipation or
the relative merits of protection and free trade, the writer could very
well argue that his interests
as a writer
were not directly affected
and that there was no need for him to vote at all. Now this attitude
of political neutrality has become untenable. The writer cannot remain
neutral in a world which is not only divided by irreconcilable philoso–
phies, but by philosophies which touch life at almost every point and
are therefore bound to affect his interests as a writer. This means that
he is bound to take up a position toward the political conflicts of his
time-and that he must decide on the relation between his attitude as
a writer and his attitude as a voter.
What then is he to do? Clearly his first obligation is to write
well and to see that the writer in him is never sacrificed to the poli–
tician whatever his views. This means that he must remain true to
the principle of non-attachment, that he must regard the words
de–
classe et deracine
as a factual description of his vocation. The social
and political structure of a country is invariably rigid and is dictated
by considerations which have very little to do with the aspirations
of the writer. He may belong by birth to a particular class and he
fIlay regard one political party as less of a menace than another; but
he can never give more than a limited support to any party because he
is committed to standards which transcend their immediate aims and
because there can never be absolute correspondence between his views
as a writer and the policy of anyone party. He simply has to make
the best of a bad job. It is not a solution to imagine that we might
one day have a center party which all men of good will might
be
able
to support and which would effectively exclude the more disreputable
elements of the present Right and Left.
"Entre autres idees enfantines,
Ie prince pretend avoir un ministere moral."
This sentence from the
Chartreuse de Parme
explains very neatly the reasons for the collapse
of liberal parties in all countries. In an age of violence and extremism
there is no place for a
ministere moral,
and a party based on ethical
principles is at a disadvantage in a world of political gangsters. Writers
are always in a minority; they can never have sufficient influence in
present conditions to change the political structure of a country, and
a vote for a
ministere moral
merely increases the chances of the more
dangerous of the other parties coming
to
power.
It
cannot be too strongly emphasized therefore that a writer's
