A lecture Olaf Stapledon prepared — on the internal evidence of its notes, around 1938–1939; no venue or date is recorded — re-set as an essay. The argument, structure, and emphases follow his manuscript notes sheet by sheet; the prose is editorial — connective sentences, examples, and asides in his manner that the notes do not contain. For exactly what is his, word for word, see the source-bounded reading edition; for his notes beside the reconstructed prose, the side-by-side reconstruction.
Nothing on the four sheets records a venue, an audience, or a date. The dating is inference from internal evidence, and is marked "c." accordingly: the project's lecture concordance places the set at c. 1938–1939, on the eve of the war, from "stop rearming", the hypothetical Left-centred "National Government" sketched as "Churchill, Eden ---- Pollitt ??", "home rule to India at once", and the heading "New Hope for Britain" on the fourth sheet — the title of Stapledon's 1939 book, which the project does not hold. A disputed marginal jotting on that sheet ("p 1941/35", with "p 1941/33" the recorded alternative) resists interpretation, and the dating does not rest on it.
The manuscript (Liverpool University Library OS/F14/13) is four sheets. The first is a synopsis dense enough to be a lecture in itself. The second opens at item "3." of a numbered plan — no sheets carrying items 1 and 2 survive in the file. The third is a nine-line sketch of Britain's destiny accepted. The fourth, the archive's insert leaf (OS F14 133 1), is bracketed at its head in a paler pencil and collapses, below a red page-number "11", into a column of compressed jottings; it carries the file's library stamp at its foot. One line is struck ("bloody revolution", in the list of consequences of funking the issue) and is not voiced in this edition; the two disputed readings are quoted with their alternatives recorded.
The argument runs from diagnosis to program. A widespread "end of the world" feeling is taken seriously but not indulged: against it are set man's most precious assets — intelligence and imagination, and a sociality that is more than herd-conformity — and "Man's real business on Earth", personality in community. The physical means of a just world-community are declared already to hand; what stands in the way is "ourselves"; so "a miracle is needed — we must excel ourselves". The program that follows is the renunciation of empire ("Little Englandism"), a new foreign and home policy, the frank "forlorn hope", and, on the last sheet, the choice of what Britain stands for, the failure of liberalism, the community/herd distinction applied to communism, Fascism and Nazism, and a "liberal communism" requiring revolution on both the individual and the social front.
In the corpus this set is a chief exhibit of what the concordance's synthesis calls the platform's bifurcation: the civic Stapledon arguing almost entirely inside the humanist frame his 1934 South Place lecture had declared "not enough". The concordance places sheet 1 in its thread on the Other for the secularized self-exceeding vocabulary ("excel ourselves", "wake", "the New Spirit") and beside the herd/community distinction for "Man's real business on Earth"; sheet 3's "population of frugal aristocrats / no proletariat, but all of us workers" recurs in the hierarchy thread as the gentler world-of-aristocrats motif — hierarchy dissolved upward, not enforced; and sheet 4 states the herd/community distinction as the diagnostic key to all three totalitarianisms.
What is not known: whether the notes were ever delivered, and if so where and to whom; what the plan's lost items 1 and 2 contained; what the red "11" and the disputed marginal jotting mean; and how the set relates, if at all, to the published New Hope for Britain, which cannot be checked against a text the project does not hold.
There is abroad today a very widespread feeling that we are approaching something like the end of the world. Not, of course, that the planet itself will come to an end; but that the kind of world in which we have learned to live may very soon collapse — the end of comfort, of security, of liberty, perhaps of culture itself. What follows? Shall we simply be merry while we may? That might serve if we had only ourselves to consider. But there are our children; and there are the children of the whole community. The future is our responsibility whether we live to see it or not.
Our plight
Let us first analyse the plight. In a phrase: the world man has made has outstripped both his intelligence and his feeling. We have power, but not wisdom. Our economic order is breaking up, and our inherited morality is breaking down; and the upshot is injustice to individuals, war, and futility.
Solutions are offered on every hand. Britain, we are told, must lead the world — collective security and gradual reform. Or we are offered Fascism. Or Communist revolution. Or a religious revolution, sometimes in the form of absolute pacifism. And if none of these will serve, is there no solution? Must we look forward to the end of civilisation, perhaps to the end of the human species? Stanley Casson has reminded us how earlier civilisations perished.
Yet we must not forget man's most precious assets. The first is intelligence, with imagination — the power to understand what is not under our noses, to envisage remote consequences and other people's experience. The second is sociality. There is an animal sociality, which is little more than conforming to the herd and enforcing conformity on others. But human sociality at its best is another thing altogether: respect for other persons, and genuine community — persons not merely submitting to one another but enriching one another. And this points to man's real business on earth: personality in community, together with the growth of knowledge and the exercise of creativity.
Consider the sort of world-community we might have. It would be founded on social justice. It would give a full life to all — not bare subsistence, but comfort, education, travel, significant work. It would make world-wide co-operation possible. And the remarkable fact is that the physical means are already to hand: we know how to produce food in abundance; we have rapid communication; we have labour-saving machinery; we could provide creative work for all — the deliberate enlistment of science in Russia shows something of what organised effort can do; and even access to knowledge can now be physically provided for a whole population.
What stands in the way? Ourselves. We are creatures of our environment and of the institutions that moulded us; frustration breeds obsession and vindictiveness; and our ideology is out of date — we are still educated for capitalism, or even for feudalism, in a world that has passed beyond both.
It seems, then, that a miracle is needed — I do not mean a supernatural one. I mean that we must excel ourselves: under the pressure of desperation we must wake to a higher lucidity and integrity, and wake to the basic values — personality and community, neither of which can flourish without the other. That waking depends on ordinary people — especially, as things stand, on Englishmen, for Britain still holds a key position. The essentials of the new spirit are individual responsibility — one's own conscience, one's own intelligence — and pacifism; and above all a Britain willing to sacrifice privileges. So we must consider policies, immediate and remote.
The transition to Little Englandism
The plan in my notes begins, as it survives, at its third item: the transition to what I shall boldly call Little Englandism — not a timid isolation, but the deliberate laying down of imperial pretensions.
First, persuade the public to accept the new ideal. Second, bring down the Government and form a new National Government with its centre of gravity definitely to the Left — one thinks, fantastically perhaps, of names as far apart as Churchill, Eden and Pollitt — and make the whole enterprise look heroic and hopeful, for so it would be.
Third, a new foreign policy: a solemn declaration that Britain's course has changed; a conference to set up the commission that would carry the change through; stop rearming — with a firm pledge, during the dangerous interval, to defend France; home rule to India at once; the progressive surrender of the dependencies, or home rule conferred on them; plain speaking to the Dominions that we mean to reduce our responsibilities; withdrawal from Gibraltar, Hong Kong, Singapore.
Fourth, a home policy to match: prevent the export of capital; an immense intensification of agriculture — perhaps even the experiment of dirtless farming; stimulate the home markets; spend greatly on rehousing, on health, on cultural provision; tax the big incomes heavily; expand education.
Fifth, preach the new gospel, and do not be too proud to give it slogans. Stress the humanistic ideals throughout. Capture the imagination of the middle class. Say frankly that this is a forlorn hope, that an inward revolution is required and great risks must be taken. Appeal not to resentment but to intelligence and generosity. This — not the restoration of imperial grandeur — would be Britain's revolution.
And if we funk the issue? Then, as an imperial Power, many enemies and no friends; the piecemeal loss of the Empire, and with it of prestige and honour; perhaps a Fascist attempt to recover by force what was lost — doomed in the long run; dominance by Germany; or being quietly sold up to the United States.
If we accept our destiny
But suppose we accept our destiny. It is a doubtful hope — I admit it; but it is the only one. Britain might then give a supreme example to the world, and such an example would change the whole course of world events. She might undertake the cultural leadership of the world, in the liberal spirit — the spirit of intelligence and charity. We should rebuild our cities and turn labour-saving machinery to the good of the whole people. There should be no proletariat: all of us workers, in one form or another; and, in the best sense, a population of frugal aristocrats.
What does Britain stand for?
We are at a turning point, and there may yet be a new hope for Britain. But beneath all policy lies a question: what does Britain stand for? There are two answers, and we must choose between them. Democracy and liberalism; or exploitation and commercial empire.
The issue is deeper than politics; it concerns fundamental values. Liberal civilisation proclaimed individual rights, and rightly; but rights cannot be severed from individual responsibilities — and we have exploited science chiefly for gain and power. Here is the failure of liberalism: great stress upon rights, while responsibility was shirked; a doctrine that began as a defence of personality degenerating into a defence of private advantage.
The reaction against liberalism followed naturally. Men exalted the community over the individual — but failed to distinguish between a community and a herd. A community is persons respecting and enriching one another; a herd demands conformity and obedience. Communism, Fascism and Nazism have each, in their way, answered the real hunger for social unity by reducing persons to instruments.
Can there be a democratic revival? Only, I think, if democracy will learn from the totalitarians the one thing they know: that personal life needs a central, social aim. The policy for Britain might be called liberal communism — or, if you prefer, social democracy; the name matters less than the conjunction: the liberal respect for persons joined to the communist insistence that economic life serve the community. Its fields are three: home, Empire, foreign.
Revolution on both fronts
We must expect chaos in the transition; a change so deep is properly a revolution, and it will reach even the family. Must the revolution of the self come first, or the revolution of institutions? Together, my notes answer — an individual revolution and a social one, neither complete without the other. Liberalism must learn its lesson and pass over into liberal communism; but liberal communism without good values would be worthless — no economic arrangement can tell us what human beings are for. Kropotkin's name stands in my notes at this point, and I let it stand here.
Economic reconstruction is not sufficient; it is necessary. We cannot breed sane and generous human beings under conditions of insecurity, frustration and hatred; neither does economic revolution by itself guarantee spiritual advance — we have even to ask whether a revolution may go backward, whether Russia has gone back. So the conclusion, and the responsibility, is double: we must work upon both fronts together.