The cable informs us that Mr. William Morris, the poet, has severed his connection with the Socialist League. As Mr. Morris was himself the founder of this particular organisation, after seceding from a greater body called the Social Democratic Federation, we may expect soon to hear that he has passed on to establish yet another sect of social Utopians. The fact seems to be that Mr. Morris, being a man of culture and sensibility, and zealous to lead a body which shall share in and exhibit those qualities, finds nothing but disappointment wait upon him. He has judged other men's motives, culture, and sentiments by his own, and has estimated them all too highly. The special feature of the new league, whose author was the author of The Earthly Paradise, was to be its attitude of philosophic theorising, while other organisations made it their business to strive and cry. It was to be, in short, Socialism served up a la Matthew Arnold. Such was Mr. Morris's conception, and such also was the conception of a certain more enlightened class of Socialist apostles, who had fled from the wrath to come in Germany and elsewhere. Persons thus well endowed with liberal culture, however ill endowed for the rest with economic penetration, have the not unnatural idea that people ought to learn before they act. The great function of the league was therefore to instruct mankind in Socialistic principles and fascinate mankind with Socialistic ideals. If Matthew ARNOLD had been a Socialist he would have been one of precisely this class. He would have talked much of the prior necessity of attaining "clear ideas," while he would have basted with a gentle unmercifulness those who, like the general run of social reformers, are waspishly obstreperous in the resolve to realise ideas which are both turbid and crude.
Unfortunately a league of any dimensions cannot, even when it is made up of Socialists, consist entirely of poets, or poetic souls, or artists with delicate sensibilities, or cultured persons who can possess their souls in patience. Mr. Morris has found this out. The lectures and essays of the leader and his apostles may have imparted the new principles, but they could not therewith impart the philosophic temperament. Accordingly the league, which would have nothing to do with the empirical tinkering politicians whom men call Radicals, and whom the Olympians call quacks, has become rampant to forthwith realise the new gospel and hurry up the millennium. Its reasonable enough distrust of the retail Radical proves to be the outcome, not of philosophic cultivation, but of a preference for the wholesale revolutionary. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that the league has incontinently adopted a no-rent and general strike manifesto, and that Mr. Morris, poet, artist, and scholar, has shaken the dust of it from off his feet, and set forth once more on his pilgrimage in search of an ideal socialism, wherein culture and sensibility shall be as contagious as are the superficial "principles " themselves. His experience reminds one of Sir Percivale in quest of the Holy Grail—
" But even while I drank the brook, and ate
The goodly apples, all these things at once
Fell into dust, and I was left alone,
And thirsting, in a land of sand and thorns."
But whereas Sir Percivale did ultimately see and was glad, it is contrary to all we know of human nature that Mr. Morris should ever find his fair ideal this side of Cockaigne or Nephelo coccygia.
The question has often been impatiently asked with regard to our poet, que diable fait-il dans cette galère [what the hell is he doing in this galley] at all ? But this inquiry usually proceeds from those who fancy all Socialists dynamitards and all Socialism Jack-Cadism. Mr. Morris is beyond question a poet, and equally beyond question he is a man who desires to behold life pervaded with art and beauty. The Earthly Paradise and the well-known artistic wall-papers are evidence of these facts. And in his volume of lectures, called Signs of Change, it is manifest that what chiefly saddens him in his contemplation of human society is the lamentable poverty of art and scarcity of the beautiful. And this depressing state of things he imputes to the defects of our present economic structure. Therefore, society must be revolutionised. And if society is revolutionised according to Morrisian plans and specifications, art and beauty will flourish after Mr. Morris's own heart. As thus. Supposing the average man to be rid of his cruellest and most brutalising labour conditions, he will have time to educate himself, to develop his best faculties, and to enjoy the things of the mind. He will obtain an intellectual quickness and a sureness of taste at least equal to those of the cultured man of to-day. Therefore, he will insist on beautiful surroundings. Art will be a necessity and not merely a luxury to him. The æsthetic instincts which are now dormant in the vast majority of men, and partially trained in a very few, will then (in the great THEN) be everywhere developed, and therewith will come a truly millennial exuberance of art and beauty in every kind.
This apparently is what Mr. Morris dreams, and the vision is decidedly attractive. Mr. Bellamy has dreamed the same dream, with incidental variations in the shape of houses with music laid on, sidewalks projected by a co-operative umbrella, and other delights. Unhappily one does not see quite how all these enticing conclusions are sure to follow from the Socialist premises. Herbert SPENCER has long ago pointed out how different the result of an institution is apt to be from its intentions. Human nature is a tough thing to grapple with, and yet to Socialism human nature is apparently a "negligeable quantity." It is quite conceivable of course, that wings might suddenly sprout from the shoulders of man in the socialistic state, and that so the ideal of Mr. MORRIS might be realised. But it is unfortunately quite as conceivable that, if the new régime did not result in the chaos which seems most likely, it would at least result in a life which was one dead colourless level, and whose significance might be expressed in one gigantic and eternal yawn. The cramping of all individual merit, aspiration, and effort on the Procrustean bed of the average member of the plebs might not result in a particularly beautiful or expansive life. Meanwhile, the fact that Mr. MORRIS'S quondam followers have thrown off their allegiance to the broad philosophy of culture and art in favour of a policy of universal dishonesty and universal strike, cannot be taken as indicating that Socialism in that particular form spells the millennium.
Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957), Saturday 15 November 1890, page 9
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