The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius

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In a narrowing world, more and more governed from Whitehall, there was every year less room for individual initiative. One was the military and imperialist middle class, generally nicknamed the Blimps, and the other the left-wing intelligentsia. His 1938 book Homage to Catalonia, an account of his experiences as a volunteer on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War, together with numerous essays on politics, literature, language, and culture, have been widely acclaimed. They have a horror of abstract thought, they feel no need for any philosophy or systematic ‘world-view’.

George Orwell - Project Gutenberg Australia George Orwell - Project Gutenberg Australia

Patriotism is usually stronger than class-hatred, and always stronger than any kind of internationalism.A navy employs comparatively few people, and it is an external weapon which cannot affect home politics directly. If the English people suffered for several years a real weakening of morale, so that the Fascist nations judged that they were ‘decadent’ and that it was safe to plunge into war, the intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible. To an increasing extent the rich and the poor read the same books, and they also see the same films and listen to the same radio programmes. Sir John Moore's army at Corunna, fighting a desperate rearguard action before escaping overseas (just like Dunkirk! In the early twenties one could see, all over the Empire, the older officials, who had known more spacious days, writhing impotently under the changes that were happening.

Orwell - The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism And The George Orwell - The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism And The

He is a symbol of the strange mixture of reality and illusion, democracy and privilege, humbug and decency, the subtle network of compromises, by which the nation keeps itself in its familiar shape. Remarks like ‘They can't run me in; I haven't done anything wrong’, or ‘They can't do that; it's against the law’, are part of the atmosphere of England. But it plays its part in the English mystique, and the intellectuals who have tried to break it down have generally done more harm than good. Limitation of incomes, on such a scale that the highest tax free income in Britain does not exceed the lowest by more than ten to one. And this is less from a respect for freedom of speech than from a simple perception that these things don't matter.There they sat, at the centre of a vast empire and a world-wide financial network, drawing interest and profits and spending them – on what? Politicians who would make cringing speeches about ‘the duty of loyalty to our conquerors’ are hardly to be found in English public life. The gentleness, the hypocrisy, the thoughtlessness, the reverence for law and the hatred of uniforms will remain, along with the suet puddings and the misty skies. In the British army the drill is rigid and complicated, full of memories of the eighteenth century, but without definite swagger; the march is merely a formalized walk.