He rested one hand on his knee and lifted
one finger and regarded it. COULD he write? There were one or two
men who ran papers and seemed to have a sort of independent
influence. Strachey, for example, with his SPECTATOR; Maxse, with
his NATIONAL REVIEW. But they were grown up, they had formed their
ideas. He had to learn first.
He lifted a second finger. How to learn? For it was learning that
he had to do.
When one comes down from Oxford or Cambridge one falls into the
mistake of thinking that learning is over and action must begin.
But until one perceives clearly just where one stands action is
impossible.
How is one with no experience of affairs to get an experience of
affairs when the door of affairs is closed to one by one's own
convictions? Outside of affairs how can one escape being flimsy?
How can one escape becoming merely an intellectual like those wordy
Fabians, those writers, poseurs, and sham publicists whose wrangles
he had attended? And, moreover, there is danger in the leisure of
your intellectual. One cannot be always reading and thinking and
discussing and inquiring.
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