The Henson Journals

[214]

Monday, August 31st, 1925.

Mine host and most of the party went off to Gleneagles to play golf. I sate in the drawing–room and talked with Evelyn Cecil most of the morning. Then we strolled for more than an hour until lunch. In the afternoon mine hostess, Ella, Cecil, and I walked to the loch, which is the reservoir of Grangetown, until tea, after which Sir Evelyn Cecil took his departure.

"I think people will always think of me as a sort of tinpot Bismark " – this was said by Ld Milner to mine host. After reading his "Credo" in the 'Times', I am disposed to think that even so no very considerable injustice will have been inflicted on his Lordship! Lord Cromer is reported to have said that he had never met anyone in whom such intellectual ability was linked to so bad a political judgment: & I think that Lord Milner's career illustrates that verdict. His principal claim to distinction is the remarkable influence he has exercised over his younger contemporaries. Steel–Maitland, Amery, & Dawson – all see light in his light.

Mine host talked freely about the economic situation. He is certainly well–informed, enterprizing, and energetic: but I doubt his diagnosis of the industrial malady. He seems to think that salvation is to be found in an adoption of American methods, standards, and ideals: & there is clearly an important element [215] of truth in his argument. There is a more open field for the individual in America, and, therefore, the intelligence & initiative which the community contains are disclosed and utilized more effectively than in Great Britain where the meticulous tyranny of the Trade–Unions is destroying our industrial competence. But I think the root of the mischief with us is moral. There is no longer any significant sense of duty in our workmen: they are discontented and disaffected. The new morality of class is not compatible with the older morality of the Decalogue: and from Christianity English workmen take nothing but the hallowing of their social ambitions. I asked S.M. point–blank whether he approved the Government decision to grant a subsidy to the Mining Industry, and he admitted that he did not, while allowing that the considerations which determined it were of great gravity.

At dinner, after the ladies had retired, Dr Gillies asked me my views about "Birth Control", and thus introduced a subject of the utmost difficulty & delicacy. We discussed it with energy, &, I think, also with intelligence. The evident interest of the three young Oxonians impressed me. They are attractive & able youths, good representatives of their generation. These "sociological" questions have taken in their minds the place held by aesthetics, imperialism, and philosophy in the minds of former generations.

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