264
PARTISAN REVIEW
Bannister or Siriol Hugh Jones, they are exactly like the ones they
succeed. Exactly. That tone is not, like the
New Yorkers,
merely
metropolitan. Obviously there is much of America to which the
New
Yorker
is alien. The
Sunday Times
is much more official and broadly
based, much more the voice of England, not London. The only thing
that could alienate an educated man, one of the class, from the
Sunday
Times,
is a difference of politics. Even the
New Statesman,
when it
turns to speak of non-political things, speaks with the same voice. There
is no other educated voice in England. There is not even a voice like
that of the independent columnists in America, some of whom do at
least make administrative smugness uncomfortable and difficult. They
are a symptom of the fundamental variety and autonomy of American
interests. England, by comparison, is homogeneous.
One reason the working class in England has cooperated less with
the Welfare State than with their old enemy, capitalism, may be that
the new managers are just as "ruling class" as the old. They assume
21.
superiority, not just that necessary to responsibility, but of the whole
mind. This is only a guess, as to the reasons for the resentment on the
part of the working class. But I know for certain that a great deal of
energy is wasted and frustrated in England because of this tyranny of
the one mind. It spoils life for the young people, as they're growing up.
It makes everything less vivid, less valuable. Of course, it has its virtues
-the humor, the discretion, the good manners, the sense of continuity,
the sense of public responsibility-but all these only irritate now. And
more important are the vices-the lack of a sense of personal adven–
ture, the lack of inner life, the unwillingness to take great things greatly.
We are, as a nation, directed outwards; and we don't recognize it, be–
cause we aren't looking to great possessions, only to stewardship and
propriety.
Of course, there is plenty of impropriety and plenty of personal
adventure, of the kind Evelyn Waugh describes. But self-respecting, self–
propagating, passionate life--where will you find that? There is an inner
deadness which the growing mind may not recognize, because it is the
only thing it is used to, but which operates nevertheless as a sterilizer
of the world, making harmless everything that might, through excess of
life, threaten conformity. Everything is reduced to a diversion-drarna
to the B.B.C. drama repertory, art to the Old Masters; or to a de–
corum-politics and history as the celebration and evolution of the
status quo.
One would like to contrast America with England at
this
point,
but it is very difficult, precisely because in America there is not one
