Читать книгу The Holy Terror - H.G. Wells - Страница 20

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He found little to excite him in the first two days of his pilgrimage and he was beginning to feel more than a little solitary when he came upon Chiffan. It was in the late afternoon and he was consuming as big a tea as he could manage with eggs and cake and jam at a pleasant generous little wayside cottage. He was going on a two-meal system, hearty breakfast and late high-tea and that was all. He found it the most economical way of feeding. And perforce he had become a strict teetotaller.

Chiffan, it seemed, was on the road in much the same spirit. He was an older man than Rudie, he might have been twenty-six or seven, and he had a pale, intelligent face with a decided nose, a faint, wry smile, bright, rather distraught, grey-blue eyes and untidy, dark brown hair. His trousers were relaxed grey slacks and he wore a knitted blue pullover in place of a jacket. His gear beside him was in an ancient Japanese-cane valise which he carried by a strap, and he had a stout cabbage-stick laid across the table. He studied Rudie for a time and Rudie, looking up from a copy of the Daily Worker, found he was being accosted.

"Doing a lonesome hike?" asked Chiffan.

"Looking about at things," said Rudie.

"Sociology? Mass observation? Something of that sort? I see you're reading the Daily Worker. Communist, maybe?"

"No-o," said Rudie, finding himself hard to explain and making a mystery of it. "No. Just interested. What are you doing?"

"I make no secret of it. I'm a disgruntled communist wandering about like a lost dog. The Left's gone to pieces...Stalin and Trotsky...

"Spain...

"United Front rot. When there is no sort of unity..." Rudie was in the completest agreement.

"Anti-Fascist. Anti-Purple shirts. What a lot they are! What good is it being just Anti-? It lets the other side choose the battlefield and you have to run after them and attack. They say it first and you say 'No'. Look at this rag."

He smacked the Daily Worker, so to speak, in the face.

"Now that's an idea!" said Chiffan alertly, taking in what Rud had said. "That's a real good idea. Yes. Anti-. If you're just Anti-. That lets the other chap choose his battlefield. Good! Oh, good!"

Rudie felt he could like this stranger. "Well, that's how I see it," he said modestly. "We want something positive. Surely we do. I've been feeling that lately. I tell you—"

Chiffan stuck out a long forefinger. "The old game is up," he said. "You've got it. We want a new formula. That's what we want—a new formula! As you say. Exactly what I have been saying! And until we get it, I'm going back to my brother's at Booksham to help him get out the Booksham Messenger and do general printing. I'm disgruntled, I tell you—deadly disgruntled, and that's all about it. I'm just going to drop in to the New World Summer School at Wexley on the way, but I don't expect anything much from that."

"And what might the New World Summer School be?" asked Rudie.

Particulars were forthcoming. They discovered themselves similar and sympathetic from the outset. There seemed no reason why they should not visit this school together.

They set out for a four-day tramp to the New World Summer School and as they tramped they talked, and while they ate they talked, and they talked while they sat in woods and under shady trees beside pleasant rivulets or hung over the parapets of little bridges during the heat of the afternoon, and when they shared a bedroom they talked most of the night, and when they slept in a Youth Hostel they talked and argued until the consensus of opinion that they ought to "Shut Up" could be disregarded no longer. Chiffan declared loudly and frequently that he had rarely met anyone with the freshness and lucidity of Rud, and Rud knew that in Chiffan he had found just that experience, response and appreciation that would bring out all the best that was in him. As he talked he discovered brilliant opinions in his mind that he had never even suspected were there.

Chiffan was in a phase of disillusionment, and his disbelief in people and especially in the leaders of the left world was acute and acid. But he had a gift for admiration. It is a winning gift. He was prepared to admire Rudie, but at first only on condition that he joined in a general denigration of the distressful world about them. He wanted a world revolution and everything completely upside down more passionately but much less hopefully than Rudie. He had the advantage of eight or nine years of experience. He knew more people and he had watched the careers of many more people. He had done a considerable amount of journalistic work. He had always been against the Government. He had picketed. He had rioted. He had been locked-up. He had been married in some imperfect way that had come undone, but he laid no stress on that. He could talk more abundantly than Rudie, though he lacked his facility of phrase. And he found something very sustaining in Rudie's manifest belief that there were still possibilities of revolutionary activity in the world. With reconstructed formulae. (Great phrase!)

Three main topics interlaced during their four-day tramp to the New World conference. One was Rudie's notion that the revolutionary movement in Great Britain should cut away from continental associations altogether and get into the closest co-operation with American revolutionists.

"You can't work with people who not only speak a different language," said Rudie, "but who're in a different phase. None of these Communists ever seem to think of that. We are laying out a revolution in a democratic country. That's our phase. Isn't it? But Russia is in a phase of"—he scarcely hesitated before the words rolled out—"precocious Communist senescence."

"Precocious Communist senescence! Oh grand, man! Oh, simply grand! And you're right."

"Spain, on the other hand, isn't even up to Marx. This anarchist syndicalism of theirs! It's pure Rousseau. Read Sender. It's a hundred and fifty years behind us."

"You're so right about this."

"But America and here are not ten years apart. Some things they're ahead and some things we are. That's our fight. Hands across the sea. One tongue. One culture. Take a hint from the Anschluss..."

That was Rudie's chief contribution.

Chiffan brought in the second theme and that was the monetary question. "It took me a time to see it, and most of them don't see it themselves, but those currency cranks have got something. Mark my words, Rud! They've really got something. They've got something fundamental. Money, you see, is the key to the whole property problem. Socialism is just William Morris and News from Nowhere until it has a theory of money. Socialism has been poking about in the factory when it ought to have been going through the books in the counting-house. Setting the worker against the employer has been barking up the wrong tree. It's the banker, Rudyard, it's the private banker. The Bank is the key position in the social war. Go for that. Control banking, control the issue of credit—and money, you know, is only a credit counter—and private enterprise is yours to do just exactly what you like with."

This took some explaining and wrangling. It was newish stuff for Rud. But Chiffan was tremendously equipped for that argument. They went about the whole question and came back to this bit of it or that. Rud would get new ideas and objections in the most unexpected circumstances and hurry to find Chiffan and expound them. Before they got to the summer school Rud was no longer talking of "Capitalists", he was talking of "Money Barons".

(And here in parenthesis we may note that henceforth we must call our Rudie, Rud and nothing else. Because Chiffan had assumed from the outset that Rud stood for Rudyard. When he had used "Rudyard" for the third time, Rud reflected upon the matter and decided not to correct him. He had always had a faint dislike to the foreign romantic flavour about Rudolf, and he felt now that for a potential demagogue in the great English-speaking community, it would be a serious handicap. He began to think of himself as Rudyard. A time was to come when he would not even recognise himself as Rudolf Whitlow.)

The third and more absorbing topic between these two young men was the possible creation of a New Revolutionary Party. It was all very well to be a great revolutionary leader in reverie, but at first it seemed almost indecent to Rud to expose that secret thought in conversation in the sunlight. Still it had to be brought forward.

"These other fellows," he said, "after all, compared to us, they aren't so wonderful. How did they get there?"

How did they get there? Or to be nearer the intention of the question; how can we get there?

Here Chiffan's eight years of observation and detraction was of the utmost value. Rud became his lively and intelligent pupil.

They canvassed this leader and group and that. Chiffan explained the faults and failures of the endless imperfect coagulations and dissolutions and recoagulations of leftism with the utmost lucidity. He had an astonishing memory. The two of them began to shape out more and more definitely the movement and organisation that was needed to correct that tangle of faults. It was to be Anglo-American (and Dominion. Certainly Dominion) from the start. It was to adopt an attitude of self-respecting co-operation towards the good industrialists. It was to promise abundant money and abundant cheap goods in a world relieved of rent and financial overheads. It was to pursue the banker and the Stock Exchange and all "speculation" pitilessly. There were to be no rent, no debentures and no sort of mortgages in the new world, and the State was to take care of the people's savings and lend their money for them to initiate profitable enterprises—guaranteeing an adequate return. "The land", they would say, "is the State's and the fullness thereof".

"Not a bad slogan," said Chiffan. "I like that biblical twang! Fullness thereof!"

"The land for mankind and the fullness thereof," tried Rud, always a little fastidious about phrasing.

A tremendous benevolence welled up in them, especially on the finer afternoons, as they sketched their economic programme. They seemed to feel already the grateful response and the eager support of mankind. They settled the little matters of shirts in favour of Rud's badges and they tried over a lot of other slogans and argued out the main conditions of launching a movement.

A point Chiffan made that seemed fresh to Rud was the necessity for invading and "capturing" already existing groups and parties.

"We've got to capture people," said Chiffan. "You can't be like Cadmus and the dragon's teeth; you can't call a party out of nothing. Nearly everybody who is politically-minded enough to join a party has joined a party already. Our party would have to raid..."

"Now that's an idea," said Rud.

"And where?"

"You know better than I do."

"I've cast about in my mind," said Chiffan, "since I chucked communism in London. But not very hopefully until I hit upon you. Now things look different somehow and I'm casting about in my mind more than ever. There's these Guidance people...No. No. Not to be sniffed at like that. They gather a lot of raw stuff. They're worth raiding. Then there's that fool Lord Horatio Bohm and his purple shirts—mauve shirts really they are, for he never had the wit to get his shirts fast colour. There's a deuce of a lot of money behind him, a lot of meaty young men and precious little in the way of ideas. Sort of vaguely anti-communist and that's about all. Fancy dress and ragging. Aristocratic—nothing to do with the blasted bourgeoisie. They might be ready to take on a good set of ideas—and there you are!"

"They do want speakers," said Rud. "In fact...I was approached...You know they're anti-Jewish?"

"Because that fool can think of nothing else. He's quarter Jew himself. It obsesses him. He's always running away from that nose of his and it annoys him by keeping just in front of him. However I merely mentioned him by the way. For the sake of illustration."

"New York," said Rud, "is the greatest Jewish city in the world."

"You think ahead," exclaimed Chiffan in warm approval. "You certainly think ahead. Mind you, Jews are not always easy to work with. They're as clever as anyone could wish, but they've always one foot in the Ghetto."

"I don't know anything about Jews," said Rud compactly.

"You will," said Chiffan...

And so discoursing, elaborating in common a magnificent reverie of revolt and power, our two young men, with their heads pleasantly swelled by these imaginative exercises, and their confidence erect, arrived at the New World Summer School at Wexley and found that with a little squeezing there was room for their admission.