PP/IH/01/42
DISCUSSION – OLD WENNINGTONIANS
When Wenningtonians get together, I notice, often with some dismay, that they usually talk about Wennington. The talk has three lines, depending on who is that gather together; 1. Do you remember…? 2. Things are not so good as they used to be. 3. How good we are compared with everybody else, especially grammar schools, or for that matter most other schools. 1. & 2 largely irrelevant, being a method of inventing conversation. 3. important and highly dangerous, as it leads to an attitude to which others reply “Doubtless ye are the people and wisdom will die with you” so much deplored by Job when facing his comforters.
This pride is dangerous because all pride is dangerous; all pride is dangerous because it leads to a wilful ignorance of facts. I also suspect it because there is something typically British or Anglo-Saxon about it: it’s the typically English attitude to the world. The English have governed large tracts of the world until very recently, and we still are apt to address the rest of the world like a schoolmaster haranguing an unruly class with a patient, gentle and highly irritating assumption of moral superiority. We are beginning now to discover that the rest of the world does not want us in the way in which we thought that they wd.. I don’t want to go in for the whys and wherefores of rebellious colonies and dominions and upstart states that enjoy twisting the lion’s tail; but the one thing that seems to me evident is that we cnnot govern the world any longer, and we cannot be its schoolmaster any longer, and that if Britain is to survive it will have to survive as something
2 different from what we think. As we are we are not wanted; and we have very little time to recover from the shock and become something that is wanted. The first question I want to throw out, therefore, is how is Britain to survive in the world?
(Now I may seem to have gone a long way from Wennington; but I haven’t; I am coming back in about five minutes or less.) Let us continue to think about the world for a few minutes longer. One of the worst results of the hydrogen bomb is that it has made people think about it most of the time when they ought to have been thinking about something else. The bomb is a terrible thing in itself, but it is more terrible because the world is seems divided between the USA and Russia. Of these two we fear Russia most, and have gone into the American camp. In the matter of force this has its justification – but in other matters it hasn’t. There are two camps because there are two ways of life, really opposd to one another. xxxxxxxxxxxxx Militarily we may be right in going with the USA, because we may be doing so stop hydrogen bombs being thrown around. But though I am frightened of the bomb being thrown, I am just as frightened of its not being thrown. Because, by being strong we may prevent Communist conquest of the world, only to awake very soon to find that the Communists have conquered the world, by ideas and the spread of a way of life. The ultimate battle is not between bombs but between ideas and ways of living. And unless we can produce something better than the American way of life, we put up a pretty poor show in the battle. 3
What are our dieas and what way of life are we going to offer the world?
This is where I want to strike a parallel, and bring us back to Wennington. Wennington’s position in Britain, the position in Britain of schools like ours, is like Britain’s position in the world; no one is going to be interested in us any more unless we justify it. Like Britain we are faced with a financial struggle for survival; and we are going to have very little help from anyone in that struggle. The Labour Party xxxxxx may not abolish us, but it won’t do anything to keep us going: for it we are privilege. The Conservatives won’t help us either; for them we are not privileged. The attitude of politicians to us is that outlined in Clough’s Decalogue:
Thou shalt not kill but needst not strive
Officiously to keep alive.
Nobody is going to keep us alive; we have to do it ourselves.
How can we do it? I don’t think it is purely a matter of finance, any more than Britain’s survival is a question of force. It is a question of ideas and a way of life. If we have the ideas and a way of life, others will join us and support us; if not, not. We cannot be a happy island hoping that the world will leave us alone in peace. Happy islands in this world are never left in peace. At the best xxxxx they become receptacles for exiled archbishops.
I suggest that there is a great deal amiss in Britain today, not in material standards but in spiritual force and moral ideas. Everyone is interested, I gloomily observe when depressed, in what they call standard of living, and in putting it up or maintaining it. And by standard of living they are meaning material standard. I am more interested in what people are living for, what purpose they have. If one lives to eat, one will I think quite rapidly die of starvation.
Now when Wenningtonians praise Wennington they are apt to say that there are all sorts of things of value in it and its education; they talk about its music and art, its training in practical things, and its training in living. I should like to know what this means. What does it mean to you, and what do you carry out into the world of real value to you and to others, not merely in phrases, but in real ideas and real actions and attitudes. Do you think that Wennington is good enough to win its battle for survival? If so, why – and one must be clear and precise. If not, then how do we make it worthy to survive? If we can answer this we may be able to answer the questions with Britain substituted for Wennington. We need to answer these questions for ourselves and for our country. I’m not merely introducing a discussion, in reality; I am speaking as urgently as I can.
We are small and apparently insignificant. But one thing among others we can learn from Jesus is that the meaning of the parable of the leaven and the mustard seed. The world is saved by small groups that develop and leaven the lump. I think this is true, and we shd not despair. But, if I might quote Jesus again: Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under the 5
foot of men.”
What saltiness have we, as a school and as a people, to prevent us from being trodden under the foot of men?
Unless we think hard, we shall be trodden.
Pp/IH/01/11
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