THE ENGLISH PEOPLE

This is an important and much needed book, though its market will not be easy to tap. It is an enlightened, well-informed, level study of the English through their institutions, attitudes and traditions. He deals with past and present; he feels that the golden age of English complacency ended in 1914, and that English super-confidence, immunity to criticism, and nationalism are on the wane. But he avoids prophecies. The main factors of pre-war English life of which he treats are these:- education, with the public school the bulwark of glass distinction; religion, with the Church of England as a vague but secure force; democracy, which offers freedom of choice in selection of a government with unchecked powers, which sustains inequalities, and maintains a monaroby for social prestige; empire, and the dualistic, abnormal, intricate position towards India; and finally, the English attitude towards war, and the outside world, and particularly towards America. Widely sourced and argumented; pungently presented; rewarding (not easy) reading.