Irish Jesuit Province

Sacred and Secular in Art and Industry by Eric GillReview by: A. L.The Irish Monthly, Vol. 67, No. 798 (Dec., 1939), pp. 846-847Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20514634 .

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846

Book Reviews Sacred and Secular in Art and Industry. By Eric Gill. (Rhode Island:

John Stevens. 1939.)

Mr. Gill's pamphlet is yet another attack on money which must already be as worried as a lion in a den of Daniels. He is the champion not primarily of the artist but of the working man. He notes acutely that as soon as profit is generally accepted as the only purpose of industry the work

man loses value as a man in general estimation and is considered solely as a profitable chattel. Hence the employer no longer sees why he should make the labourer's work interesting to him, why he should leave to him a certain initiative in design, why he should make him responsible for any more than the mechanical fulfilment of orders, why, in short, he should require him to be an artist. Hence the drudgery of labour and consequent atrophy of human thought and desire, of spiritual eagerness, in the work ing classes. Hence, too, the segregation of the artist and the perplexity occasioned by his very existence in the world. It may seem old-maidish to endeavour to make labour more interesting when the labouring classes are, in fact, in want of the necessaries of life. Mr. Gill would, doubtless, reply that work under his conditions is an aspect of life itself, food and raiment but the means to living. In any case, independent as is his thought, it has been anticipated in the agitation against chain labour sponsored by the group of French sociologists led by M. Daniel-Rops, to say nothing of the Encyclicals. It is a serious case.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gill's remedy is to put away the financier and the middle man. For this purpose he realises that he requires something more subtle than an axe. He suggests that if all men can be made to practise holy poverty, the financier will lose power automatically. By poverty he does not mean actual destitution, but a spirit of indifference to riches, the elimination of

money as an end of life. Men, however, will not willingly be poor. It is

easy to despise wealth if one has it, but most men have none. It is impos sible by argument to make credit discreditable. Hence the State must be invoked. Politics must be conducted on the assumption that the principle

of poverty is universally recognised, and thus, he might have added, we

shall have discovered a use for politicians.

One might demur to some details in the pamphlet, such as the sumilmary dismissal of the ultimate possibility of the Leisure State. But let them pass; a word remains to be said of the main doctrine. Mr. Gill calls it common

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BOOK REVIEWS 847

sense. If it were so, it would promise material advantages and might be accepted. As it is, its promise is spiritual; it is profound wisdom. Mr. Gill hasn't a chance.

A-.L.

Margaret of Fair Hill. A. P. Smithson. (The Talbot Press. 5/-.) Margaret of Fair Hill is a romance with all the time-honoured features

of romance. It is a love story that would be old-fashioned were it not that love does not follow the fashions. The course of love is crossed by

Hermione's cursed spite " to choose love by another's eyes ". There is misunderstanding, a strange will, a mysterious disappearance, and, of course, reconciliation and return. There is in the last pages, too, a most satisfying surprise. All is told with the author's smooth and accomplished style. The dialogue is simple and natural, the characters are not monsters of selfishness, or vice, though selfishness does form the basis of three well-contrasted women's characters. Moreover, there is something infectious in the authoress's love of Ireland, and though the tale carries us to London and the Continent, we, too, share her preference for the old house and the untidy, amiable gardens of Fair Hill, Co. Limerick.

S.C.

Saint Just. J. B. Morton. (Longmans. 15/-.)

This is a most interesting book about a most interesting and detestable young man. Mr. Morton has added to his previous studies of the French Revolution this fresh volume dedicated to Hilaire Belloc, and impregnated on every page with that master's ardent worship of the Revolutionary spirit and keen enthusiasm for its remarkable military achievements. But to-day it is hard to work up such enthusiasm for these first conscript armies, filled

with the intoxicating propaganda of " commissars " and " deputies on

mission ", and flung in wave after wave of breathless attack upon their enemies. Nor can we easily overlook the suffering and the death roll in

a dream of the Eagles entering all the capitals of Europe to proclaim liberty -and the Napoleonic Empire.

Saint Just himself is a good subject for apologia. He has many if not all the " public school " virtues and vices. But politics are not a game for school boys, even public school boys. His reaction from high-minded humanitarianism to old-blooded and ruthless practicality is not pretty reading. If he possessed, as he surely did, courage, energy, self-control, eloquence, loyalty, and a strange fascinating beauty, he united these qualities to a measureless pride, a crude outlook on human nature, and an unbearable

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