[In the following review of The Thirties, Crossman argues that Muggeridge's acserbic observations do not rise to the level of great satire because they fail to contrast society's evils with any vision of a higher good.]

‘Men aim at projecting their own inward unease on as large a screen as possible. When they tremble, the universe must.’ Thus Muggeridge on his first page; and his judgment upon the human race applies with peculiar appropriateness to his own mordant sketch of this country's recent history. This scrapbook of the thirties,¹ with its strange mixture of wit and facetiousness, of debunking caricature and sharp observation, has the semblance of history. The Thirties, in racing language, is a thoroughbred out of The Waste Land by Eminent Victorians and trained by C. P. Scott; or, to put it in another way, it is the confessions of a member of that sensitive generation of post-war intellectuals who combined an ironic reaction against Georgian poetry and Victorian morals with a strong Liberal belief in justice and liberty. Like Mr. Aldous Huxley, Mr. Muggeridge is tormented by the feeling that the stable civilization, which he could simultaneously debunk and reform in the twenties, is now collapsing under his feet. He can no longer work in the safe assurance that civilization will survive his mockery—and even be the better for it. He can no longer satisfy his generous Liberal sympathies by the exposure of the plight of Ukrainian, Chinese or Indian minorities without feeling that such an exposure may bring down British civilization as well. In a world grown suddenly serious, in a civilization struggling for bare existence, the Socratic jester has no place. He must either turn to the task of saving civilization or he must reject civilization as a whole and from one desperate pinnacle of religious mystique prophesy doom to the human race.

Mr. Muggeridge has temporarily chosen the latter course; vanity of vanity, he preaches, all is vanity. The only pattern in history which he finds is that,

‘In the immutable nature of life, it is necessary that every hope and folly, all the expense of passion should be taken to its extreme. The Euclidian conclusion—“which is absurd”—must constantly be demonstrated; reductio ad absurdum, more plausibly than dialectical materialism, may be taken as the principle which provides a key to human affairs. There is no stopping short; no moderate hope or folly, no moderate passion. Lear must go mad … the Rector of Stiffkey be thrown to menagerie lions and MacDonald go down in a blaze of conferences, making what is in effect his last bow in South Kensington Geological Museum to an assembly of representatives of all extant governments, not excepting Liberia.’

This passage typifies the best and the worst of Mr. Muggeridge's book. It is witty, but the wit too often tumbles over into smartness; it is savage but, because it is so all-inclusive in its condemnation, the reader, who is sound in life and limb, will not put on sackcloth and ashes and weep with Mr. Muggeridge: on the contrary, he will enjoy himself. ‘Smart stuff’, he will think, ‘but of course he lays it on a bit thick.’ The worst of assuming the mantle of Jeremiah is that, instead of achieving a wholesale conversion, you may cheer up the sinners by providing them with a hearty guffaw. The great satirist arouses our indignation because he contrasts good and evil. The writer for whom everything is a sour joke may relieve his own feelings: but for the rest of the world he becomes mere entertainment. And that, no doubt, is the most ironical joke of all.

Judged, then, as entertainment, The Thirties is to be recommended; judged as a serious estimate of our age, it is clever, hysterical and defeatist, sacrificing truth for the sake of an epigram.

‘In 1931 protests were made in Parliament against a broadcast by a Cambridge economist, Mr. Maurice Dobb, on the ground that he was a Marxist; now the difficulty would be to find an economist employed in any university who was not one.’

‘Social services gained momentum. … The nation's teeth, the nation's eyes, the nation's intestines, all its organs, internal and external, were improving, as published reports and ministerial statements testified. Nor was the nation's mind neglected. A Committee for Verse and Prose Recitation arranged readings of “good poetry and plays” in public houses. …’

Such bons mots would be amusing enough in a light-hearted skit: they become irritating in a book which purports to be serious; and they are only explicable when we read:

‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God: cursed are the impure in heart, for they shall see Man.’

which is execrable theology but exactly describes Mr. Muggeridge's mood. Like F. A. Voigt, another Manchester Guardian man, he takes refuge in a god of vengeance from the human race which he so detests, and ends up with this remarkable profession of faith:

‘The only brotherhood is of work, the only sisterhood of procreation—except membership of a family whose father is in Heaven,’

a statement somewhat ridiculous outside Nazi Germany.

The Thirties has been chosen by the Book Society to cheer up our black-out evenings, presumably on the theory that an emetic will do its members no harm. Certainly it will make a pleasing contrast to the platitudes of our preachers and a useful supplement to Lord Halifax's recent address to the undergraduates of Oxford. On Mr. MacDonald and Earl Baldwin, on newspaper competitions and the Abdication, Mr. Muggeridge writes brilliantly. Indeed, he is always illuminating when he can raise his head out of the slough of despond. It would be a pity if so gifted a writer were to be spoilt by over-acidity; and I believe that Mr. Muggeridge might find a cure if he forgot politicians and turned to the study of man. For if the top crust of civilization is cracking, the men and women underneath are sound enough to restore even Mr. Muggeridge's belief in human nature.

Note

1. The Thirties, 1930-40 in Great Britain. By Malcolm Muggeridge. (Hamish Hamilton.)