The Henson Journals

[35]

Saturday, June 25th, 1921.

We want more revolutionary feeling in this country: but we must make our own revolutionary conceptions, and not import the less successful from France. For this country the Social General Strike is irrelevant".

G.D.H. Cole. "The World of Labour", p. 202. (pub. 1913)

Mr Cole is, or was, a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He writes on economic subjects with the concentrated malignity of the mere irresponsible theorist, who has heated his imagination without really informing his mind. He preaches the "class–war" sans phrase: and pours out on the English Trade–Unionists many "gibes & flouts & sneers" because they are concerned with "benefits", and unconcerned with developing "class–consciousness". It is a disquieting circumstance that a writer of this kind should find so large a welcome for his books. This book, "The World of Labour", published in 1913, is in its 4th edition. Its tone is even worse than its argument.

I spent the morning in preparing a sermon for Monkwearmouth. Plummer's edition of Bede's History was very useful. The notes are mines of serviceable information. Ernest and I weeded the path, though the great heat made exertion difficult. After dinner we walked to Wolsey's pool, and had much talk together. He is a very baffling mixture of good sense and an almost childish fatuity, of an even acute intelligence and a simplicity which would astonish one in a maidservant! He has seen more of the world than most men of his years.

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