Compare two newspapers which carry almost precisely the same title: The Times and Le Temps. Both are controlled by roughly similar interests; both appeal to a public which is far removed from the level of the herd; the impartiality of both is equally suspect. Still, allowing for all that, the reader of the first will be infinitely better informed about the world as it is than the regular subscriber to the second. The same contrast is to be found if one compares those organs of the French Press which take most pride in what they call their ‘good manners’, with, say, the Frankfurter Zeitung – not only with the Frankfurter of pre-Hitlerian days, but even with its modern successor. The wise man, says the proverb, is contented with little. In the field of information, our middle class has certainly been, in the sense intended by the sober Epicurus, terribly wise….
What have we done about the old maxim which says ‘Know thyself’? I have been told that on one of the International Commissions our delegate was publicly laughed at by his Polish colleague because, of all the nations represented, we alone were unable to provide a serious statistical table of wage-rates. The heads of our great industrial undertakings have always pinned their faith to secrecy – which favours the petty interests of individual – rather than to that knowledge openly displayed which assists collective action. In this century of chemists they have retained the mental outlook of alchemists….
But the worst of this mental laziness is that, almost invariably, it leads to a sort of gloomy mood of self-satisfaction. Every day I hear ‘back to the land’ sermons on the radio. The French people, maimed and abandoned, are told: ‘You let yourselves be deluded by the charms of a far too highly mechanized civilization. By accepting its laws and its products, you turned away from those ancient values which made you what you are. You had become chaff of the great city, of the factory, perhaps, even, of the school, whereas what your nature craves is the village or the market-town familiar to your ancestors, the primitive farming methods of ancient days, the small, compact society governed by its local notables. Those are the waters in which you must bathe if you are to recover your former greatness.’…
The donkey-cart may be a friendly and charming means of transport, but if we refuse to replace it by the motor-car, where the motor-car is desirable, we shall find ourselves stripped of everything – including the donkey.