THE SUNDAY DISPATCH

London, England

5 October 1958

(page 8)

I MAY BE OLD-FASHIONED BUT

. . . THIS REALLY SHOCKS ME

Before me lies a large picture of the Duke of Newcastle. He is smiling a big smile htat stretches across three columns of a daily newspaper. Millions of British families must have started their mornings with that smile. By the duke’s side stands a girl, young enough to be his daughter. She is also smiling. Smiling at the duke.

As pretty as a picture, with a nice line in mink hanging over her arm. A handsome pair, I say, who have provided the latest example of marriage à la mode.

They have broken their marriage vows, left their legal partners, upset a number of lives, and interrupted the growing-up of their children. I may be old-fashioned, but I am getting a little tired of this sort of thing.

Not merely of the general slackening of morals, but of the way in which immorality is taken for granted, as though it were rather chic.

There was nothing hole-in-corner about that photograph. It was not a furtive snapshot of two star-crossed lovers escaping through a back door. It was posed in the Dorchester.

As I say, I am getting a little tired of this sort of thing in a so-called Christian country.

An Evil Creed

I am not one of those who think that infidelity is the ultimate sin. Ever since I was an undergraduate I have fought for the humanization of our divorce laws. But when I see all restraint abandoned and all discipline despised I am inclined to despair.

One of the most evil men who ever lived, the late Aleister Crowley, once coined a phrase that summed up the whole of his hideous philosophy. Ten words: “DO WHAT THOU WILT IS THE WHOLE OF THE LAW.”

It is a creed that must end, as it ended with him, in the total damnation of body and soul. And it seems to me that a very large percentage of British men and women have decided to adopt it.

Do what thou wilt. If you see a pretty woman and want to possess her, go right ahead. Nature is nature isn’t it? All the world loves a lover. . . . what?

Do what thou wilt. If you want to live like a rake and ruin your health, the State will take care of you. If you want to over-spend and blue your savings, the State will educate your children.

Nobody but a sucker believes in discipline nowadays. Discipline is “bull,” and “bull,” as we all know, is out.

Yes, I am sure that all this is very old-fashioned. And the only reason I dare to write it is because I have a faint hope that there may be a few other people, not necessarily senile or decrepit, who are equally old-fashioned.

I am not writing a tirade against “sex”: one might as well write a tirade against Niagara Falls. But I am most bitterly deploring the current conception that sex comes first, that sex is the ultimate master, that sex excuses everything.

Worthwhile

I BELIEVE that nothing worthwhile in art, in business, in sport, or in any human activity is achieved without relentless discipline.

I BELIEVE that a man’s life—a good life and a full life—is a matter of blood, tears, toil, and sweat from the cradle to the grave.

I BELIEVE this most passionately, about the family and the home

And if there are not enough people who share this creed, I BELIEVE that, before long, Britain will be a second-rate nation in the eyes of the world and a fifth-rate nation in the eyes of God.