Evening star., 1936-09-18

security, stability In employment, q
living standard which their individual
incomes, apart from communal effort,
are unable TO give them. They also
know that something is out Of joint in
IN economic system which cannot be
kept functioning and producing, that
repeatedly and periodically stalls and
that only accepts the necessary ad-
justments under threat Of violence.
But, on the other hand, they revolt
against the standards Of the prole-
tariat. The family, spiritual tradi-
tions, continuity, culture, social forms,
privacy, amenities, are all realities to
them, perhaps the strongest realities.
They have, too, q sentiment for the
soil. They have the feeling, which the
uprooted and propertyless proletariat
does not share, that they are heirs
TO thousand years Of history and
culture. And suddenly these middle
classes wake up to the choice Of death
by electrocution or death by hang
ing: to military dictatorship or prole-
tartan dictatorship. In France 1t
looks a. though that awakening may
have come too late.
~ -
This middle group. everywhere the
majority. Is not the least competent
class In the nation. On the con-
trary. it Is by all odds the most
numerous, the most productive and
the most stable group. There Is more
good will in it than there u any
where else. It furnishes the organ
izing brains, the stamina and the
intellectual leadership for all other
classes. But except in Sweden. In
Holland, and to an extent In England,
1t has failed to come forward with an
aggressive program.
The aggressive programs are formu-
lated by the right and the left. Both
of them repeat over and over. with
finally an almost hypnotic influence.
that one must choose. And, confronted
with this choice, the people Of the
center make the falsest kind Of alli-
ances, some of the worst offenders
being the tntellectuals and. with them
the youth Of the so-called intelli-
gensia. For the very passivity Of the
middle classes offers to youth and in
ideas. their energy and their con-
tinual restless searches. Both the
young and the intellectuals are in
revolt against complacency. They are
in revolt against outworn myths,
cherished by the comfortable 30 long
as they are comfortable. Youth and
the intellectual long to stir up the
self-satisfied moloch. They look for
alliances, and they find them-in the
militant proletariat. eager to welcome
them. II their dissatisfaction takes the
form Of disgust and cynicism, they
may join the extreme right and try to
furnish 1t with philosophy. But one
fine day the intellectuals find they
have betrayed themselves. and worse
than they have betrayed any other
group. For under all the dictatorships.
military or proletarian, their citadel
is the one which Is first laid low.
~
And yet 1t Is to the tntellectuals,
who spring predominantly from this
great group of the center, that we
ought to expect the new synthesis
for which the whole world Is looking.
1t is they who ought to affect the
fusion between change and tradition;
the integration Of liberty with au-
thority. 1t Is they who ought to fur
nish the new principles by which
valid standards Of social behavior can
be set. For it is only from them that
we can expect a disinterested program
based upon knowledge that We can
expect standards approaching univer-
sal validity.
4 i
When will they stop ghosting their
interiors? When will they take re-
sponsibility for their own values?
(copyrisht. 1936,)