The Gospel Of Selfishness

( Originally Published 1920 )

SIR,--No one with any recollection of life before the calamity of the recent dreadful war could for one moment believe that he or she has now entered into a new world, in the sense of a better or improved world. We are undoubtedly in an altered one, and in one in which we see so much of what we valued and prized most gradually slipping away from our grasp and ken. The whole social cosmos of all continents has had a shock, and it is still suffering from tremor and nervousness, and we can see the various nations, and even individuals, looking at each other with some amount of nervous distrust and expectancy. Forces are let loose and have become dominant which were hitherto held in leash, and subdued by public opinion and by the social laws of " live and let live." There is a wave of social unrest which is rapidly becoming social insanity, in that in many aspects it is suicidal and demoralised, and its tendencies are to subvert and demolish all law and order and authority, with a contempt for the rights and needs of all members of the community, and a destruction of that peace and rest which the peoples require and cannot do without, in order to enable them to recover themselves and become again whole and strong. The two leading characteristic features of humanity at present in its altered state in the " new world " are, firstly, selfishness and, secondly, a mad craze for enjoyment and amusement. " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." Let us enjoy ourselves while we can, we may soon be beggars. What is the good of saving, or economy ? The work-man or the tax collector will have it, not us. Hence the extravagance, the lust for pleasure, the crowded restaurants and theatres and music-halls, and picture palaces, dances, dinners, golf, motors, betting, foot-ball, every possible thing that can enable people to rush about from place to place, from thing to thing, and to forget themselves for the time, at all cost for the future. There is a pleasure mania, an extravagance mania, a lust for spending. It has pervaded all classes from the street gamin and kitchenmaid to the aristocrat, the plutocrat, and the Government bureaucrat.

What are the restraining influences of any value ? Preachers are disregarded. The political economist may produce his laws and theories in vain endeavour to show the inevitable disaster ahead. The philosopher may inculcate the folly and desperation of such a life. The dean, the vicar, the curt, the pastor, may strain their earnest eloquence to bring people back to a sane and simple life, but it is of no avail. The country would be all the better for a dose of Cromwell and his Independents. There is too much liberty of thought and action. This liberty of thought is destroying the moral goodness of the youth of the generation; the liberty of action is enabling fools to do with impunity what they themselves wish and will, and to inflict untold misery and want on their fellow-creatures. There would seem to be only two possible hopes of cure. One would be the re-establishment of Christianity as a living thing, compelling people to more closely consider their neighbours and to cease to injure and ruin them. The other would be a strong centralised Government, which, by virtue of laws made for the purpose, and for the protection of society in general, should put down evildoers of all kinds and classes and put an end to their practices. " There has gone a glory from the world." The nation has lost much of its solidity of character and is rapidly losing its self-respect. Unless some such reconstruction of national character occurs we stand to lose all that our sons and brothers fought for, and their lives will have been spent in vain wasted. As the working people are the more numerous in the country, it is to them that this must mostly appeal. Let each one of them not only think but act for himself and not be gulled by others. And let him do so, not as a man whose life-interests depend upon picture palaces, betting, and football, but as a man who has a wife and children or mother and sisters dependent upon him, and to whom his whole duty belongs, and not to himself.

Let him realise that any act he contemplates in the way of striking, when he is already well off, which will inflict want and misery, even illness and death, upon others, will inevitably have results which he never contemplates, and will recoil on himself and his own. The only chance this country has of recovery is not the perpetual outbreak of fresh sores and new diseases, it is the quiet and rest of peace at home, necessary for everybody to work their hardest and best with an earnestness, to work off the war's worst after-effects. The man who is in danger of bankruptcy and failure from living beyond his means, if he thinks he has any chance at all of staving it off and keeping his business, immediately retrenches in all possible ways, cuts down expenses, and denies himself all pleasures and extravagances until he has done so, and moreover, and this is important, he works his hardest to increase his output and to get new business. Let the nation do that. Let the Government show the example by national economy and reduced expenditure. Let those who have money think of the moral sin of wasting it, and let the working people feel it a crime to throw the nation back when it is making a bound to recover itself after its disasters. And, above all, let the working people recollect that if cheaper goods come from abroad, as they surely will, and as they did before the war, and that Germany, America, and Japan will willingly supply our market as they did before, and that every commodity placed cheaply before our people, if it captures the market here, will mean the loss of that commodity as an industry of this country. Let the miners put up the coal if they will, it will come cheaper from the Transvaal and other countries, and if we cannot buy it at home at a price we can afford, we must get it elsewhere. The same will apply to iron, steel, glass, soft goods, wearing apparel, all the necessities of life. And the British workman at the end of a series of carefully elaborated strikes may wake to find his occupation gone to foreigners who have worked.—Yours faithfully,

SPECTATOR.

Aug. 26, 1920.