THE PRACTICAL PESSIMIST

Patriotic pessimism is a rare attitude. Even in the most discouraging narrative of national failure, one almost always finds a hopeful note. Apparently, the philosophical fallacy that progress is inevitable has made a deep impression on the minds of men. The latest pronunciamento of Dean Ralph Inge, the "gloomy Dean" of newspaper headlines, contains a healthy antidote to such universal optimism. In his recent book, he prophesies the gradual decl no of England exhausted by internal and external war.

True, his analysis is not free from the distortion of international pique, a picturing of alien powers malignantly striving to reduce British prestige. But these spectres which after all are but half fictitious, Dean Inge accepts in a fatalistic spirit, quite contrary to the usual jingoistic anathemas. And thus his description of French hostility and American indifference to the English carries conviction where the poetic bitterness of Kipling did not.

Whether this ecclesiastical gloom be justified or not, it is a needed palliative for national over-confidence. Minority politicians may assert that the country is decadent, but they always imply that the remedy is simply to place them in power. Individual critics may make despondent observations, but usually they urge a pet reform to set the world aright. Even cynics of the Mencken variety who see little virtue in mankind alleviate the sting of their sneers by a tacit admission that their circle is not beyond saving.

Intellectual England is indeed fortunate in possessing a dismal prophet Dean Inge's repeated reminders that the advance of civilization is by no means inevitable may be just the spur which the national genius needs to ensure progress.