MATERIAL CONDITIONS AND IDEAL ENDS

Is it just or reasonable, that most voices against the main end of government should enslave the less number that would be free? More just it is, doubtless, if it come to force, that a less number compel a greater to retain, which can be no wrong to them, their liberty, than that a greater number, for the pleasure of their baseness, compel a less most injuriously to be their fellow slaves. They who seek nothing but their own just liberty, have always the right to win it, whenever they have the power, be the voices never so numerous that oppose it. John Milton.

Our generation likes to flatter itself that it attaches less weight to economic considerations than did its parents or grandparents. The “End of Economic Man” bids fair to become one of the governing myths of our age. Before we accept this claim, or treat the change as praiseworthy, we must inquire a little further how far it is true. When we consider the claims for social reconstruction which are most strongly pressed it appears that they are almost all economic in character: we have seen already that the “re-interpretation in economic terms” of the political ideals of the past, of liberty, equality, and security, is one of the main demands of people who at the same time proclaim the end of economic man. Nor can there be much doubt that in their beliefs and aspirations men are to-day more than ever before governed by economic doctrines, by the carefully fostered belief in the irrationality of our economic system, by the false assertions about “potential plenty”, pseudo-theories about the inevitable trend towards monopoly, and the impression created by certain much advertised occurrences such as the destruction of stocks of raw materials or the suppression of inventions, for which competition is blamed, though they are precisely the sort of thing which could not happen under competition and which are made possible only by monopoly and usually by government-aided monopoly.l

In a different sense, however, it is no doubt true that our generation is less willing to listen to economic considerations than was true of its predecessors. It is most decidedly unwilling to sacrifice any of its demands to what are called economic arguments, it is impatient and intolerant of all restraints on their immediate ambitions, and unwilling to bow to economic necessities. It is not any contempt for material welfare, or even any diminished desire for it, but, on the contrary, a refusal to recognise any obstacles, any conflict with other aims which might impede the fulfilment of their own desires, which distinguishes our generation. Economophobia would be a more correct description of this attitude than the doubly misleading “End of Economic Man”, which suggests a change from a state of affairs which has never existed in a direction in which we are not moving. Man has come to hate, and to revolt against, the impersonal forces to which in the past he submitted even though they have often frustrated his individual efforts.

I The frequent use that is made of the occasional destruction of wheat, coffee, etc., as an argument against competition is a good illustration ofthe intellectual dishonesty ofmuch ofthis argument, since a little reflection will show that in a competitive market no owner ofsuch stocks can gain by their destruction. The case of the alleged suppression of useful patents is more complicated and cannot be adequately discussed in a note; but the conditions in which it would be profitable to put into cold storage a patent which in the social interest ought to be used are so exceptional that it is more than doubtful whether this has happened in any important instance.

This revolt is an instance of a much more general phenomenon, a new unwillingness to submit to any rule or necessity the rationale of which man does not understand; it makes itself felt in many fields oflife, particularly in that of morals; and it is often a commendable attitude. But there are fields where this craving for intelligibility cannot be fully satisfied and where at the same time a refusal to submit to anything we cannot understand must lead to the destruction of our civilisation.

Though it is natural that, as the world around us becomes more complex, our resistance grows against the forces which, without our understanding them, constantly interfere with individual hopes and plans, it is just in these circumstances that it becomes less and less possible for anyone fully to understand these forces. A complex civilisation like ours is necessarily based on the individual adjusting himself to changes whose cause and nature he cannot understand: why he should have more or less, why he should have to move to another occupation, why some things he wants should become more difficult to get than others, will always be connected with such a multitude of circumstances that no single mind will be able to grasp them; or, even worse, those affected will put all the blame on an obvious immediate and avoidable cause, while the more complex interrelationships which determine the change remain inevitably hidden to them. Even the director of a completely planned society, if he wanted to give an adequate explanation to anyone why he has to be directed to a different job, or why his remuneration has to be changed, could not fully do so without explaining and vindicating his whole plan-which means, of course, that it could not be explained to more than a few.

It was men’s submission to the impersonal forces of the market that in the past has made possible the growth of a civilisation which without this could not have developed; it is by thus submitting that we are every day helping to build something that is greater than anyone of us can fully comprehend. It does not matter whether men in the past did submit from beliefs which some now regard as superstitious: from a religious spirit of humility, or an exaggerated respect for the crude teachings of the early economists. The crucial point is that it is infinitely more difficult rationally to comprehend the necessity ofsubmitting to forces whose operation we cannot follow in detail, than to do so out of the humble awe which religion, or even the respect for the doctrines of economics, did inspire. It may indeed be the case that infinitely more intelligence on the part of everybody would be needed than anybody now possesses, if we were even merely to maintain our present complex civilisation without anybody having to do things of which he does not comprehend the necessity. The refusal to yield to forces which we neither understand nor can recognise as the conscious decisions of an intelligent being is the product of an incomplete and therefore erroneous rationalism. It is incomplete because it fails to comprehend that the co-ordination of the multifarious individual efforts in a complex society must take account of facts no individual can completely survey. And it fails to see that, unless this complex society is to be destroyed, the only alternative to submission to the impersonal and seemingly irrational forces of the market is submission to an equally uncontrollable and therefore arbitrary power of other men. In his anxiety to escape the irksome restraints which he now feels, man does not realise that the new authoritarian restraints which will have to be deliberately imposed in their stead will be even more painful.

Those who argue that we have to an astounding degree learned to master the forces of nature but are sadly behind in making successful use of the possibilities of social collaboration are quite right so far as this statement goes. But they are mistaken when they carry the comparison further and argue that we must learn to master the forces of society in the same manner in which we have learnt to master the forces of nature. This is not only the path to totalitarianism, but the path to the destruction of our civilisation and a certain way to block future progress. Those who demand it show by their very demands that they have not yet comprehended the extent to which the mere preservation ofwhat we have so far achieved depends on the co-ordination of individual efforts by impersonal forces.

Individual freedom cannot be reconciled with the supremacy of one single purpose to which the whole society must be entirely and permanently subordinated. The only exception to the rule that a free society must not be subjected to a single purpose is war and other temporary disasters when subordination of almost everything to the immediate and pressing need is the price at which we preserve our freedom in the long run. This explains also why so many ofthe fashionable phrases about doing for the purposes of peace what we have learnt to do for the purposes ofwar are so very misleading: it is sensible temporarily to sacrifice freedom in order to make it more secure in the future; but the same cannot be said for a system proposed as a permanent arrangement. That no single purpose must be allowed in peace to have absolute preference over all others applies even to the one aim which everybody now agrees comes in the front rank: the conquest of unemployment. There can be no doubt that this must be the goal of our greatest endeavour; even so, it does not mean that such an aim should be allowed to dominate us to the exclusion of everything else, that, as the glib phrase runs, it must be accomplished “at any price”. It is, in fact, in this field that the fascination of vague but popular phrases like “full employment” may well lead to extremely short-sighted measures, and where the categorical and irresponsible “it must be done at all cost” of the single-minded idealist is likely to do the greatest harm. It is of very great importance that we should approach with open eyes the task which in this field we shall have to face after the war, and that we should clearly realise what we may hope to achieve. One of the dominant features of the immediate postwar situation will be that the special needs of war have drawn hundreds of thousands of men and women into specialised jobs where during the war they have been able to earn relatively high wages. There will, in many instances, be no possibility of employing the same numbers in these particular trades. There will be an urgent need for the transfer oflarge numbers to other jobs, and many ofthem will find that the work they can then get is less favourably remunerated than was true of their war job. Even re-training, which certainly ought to be provided on a liberal scale, cannot entirely overcome this problem. There will still be many people who, if they are to be paid according to what their services will then be worth to society, would under any system have to be content with a lowering of their material position relative to that of others.

If, then, the trade unions successfully resist any lowering of the wages ofthe particular groups in question, there will be only two alternatives open: either coercion will have to be used, Le. certain individuals will have to b~ selected for compulsory transfer to other and relatively less well paid positions, or those who can no longer be employed at the relatively high wages they have earned during the war must be allowed to remain unemployed till they are willing to accept work at a relatively lower wage.

This is a problem which would arise in a socialist society no less than in any other; and the great majority of workmen would probably be just as little inclined to guarantee in perpetuity their present wages to those who were drawn into specially well paid employments because of the special need of war. A socialist society would certainly use coercion in this position. The point that is relevant for us is that if we are determined not to allow unemployment at any price, and are not willing to use coercion, we shall be driven to all sorts of desperate expedients, none of which can bring any lasting relief and all ofwhich will seriously interfere with the most productive use of our resources. It should be specially noted that monetary policy cannot provide a real cure for this difficulty except by a general and considerable inflation, sufficient to raise all other wages and prices relatively to those which cannot be lowered, and that even this would bring about the desired result only by effecting in a concealed and underhand fashion that reduction ofreal wages which could not be brought about directly. Yet to raise all other wages and incomes to an extent sufficient to adjust the position of the group in question would involve an inflationary expansion on such a scale that the disturbances, hardships, and injustices caused would be much greater than those to be cured. This problem, which will arise in a particularly acute form after the war, is one which will always be with us so long as the economic system has to adapt itself to continuous changes.

There will always be a possible maximum of employment in the short run which can be achieved by giving all people employment where they happen to be and which can be achieved by monetary expansion. But not only can this maximum be maintained solely by progressive inflationary expansion and with the effect of holding up those redistributions of labour between industries made necessary by the changed circumstances, and which so long as workmen are free to choose their jobs will always come about only with some delays and thereby cause some unemployment: to aim always at the maximum of employment achievable by monetary means is a policy which is certain in the end to defeat its own purposes. It tends to lower the productivity of labour and thereby constantly increases the proportion of the working population which can be kept employed at present wages only by artificial means.

There is little doubt that after the war wisdom in the management of our economic affairs will be even more important than before and that the fate of our civilisation will ultimately depend on how we solve the economic problems we shall then face. We shall at first be poor, very poor indeed-and the problem of regaining and improving our former standards may in fact prove for Great Britain more difficult than for many other countries. If we act wisely there is little question that by hard work and by devoting a considerable part of our efforts to overhauling and renewing our industrial apparatus and organisation, we shall in the course of a few years be able to return to, and even to surpass, the level we had reached. But this presupposes that we shall be satisfied to consume currently no more than is possible without impairing the task of reconstruction, that no exaggerated hopes create irresistible claims for more than this, and that we regard it as more important to use our resources in the best manner and for the purposes where they contribute most to our well-being than that we should use all our resources somehow. 1

Perhaps no less important is that we should not, by short-sighted I This is perhaps the place to emphasise that, however much one may wish a speedy return to a free economy, this cannot mean the removal at one stroke of most of the wartime restrictions. Nothing would discredit the system of free enterprise more than the acute, though probably short-lived, dislocation and instability such an attenlpt would produce. The problem is at what kind of system we should aim in the process of demobilisation, not whether the wartime system should be transformed into more permanent arrangements by a carefully thought-out policy of gradual relaxation of controls, which may have to extend over several years.

attempts to cure poverty by a redistribution instead of by an increase in our income, so depress large classes as to turn them into determined enemies ofthe existing political order. It should never be forgotten that the one decisive factor in the rise oftotalitarianism on the Continent, which is yet absent in this country, is the existence of a large recently dispossessed middle class. Our hopes of avoiding the fate which threatens must indeed to a large extent rest on the prospect that we can resume rapid economic progress which, however low we may have to start, will continue to carry us upwards; and the main condition for such progress is that we should all be ready to adapt ourselves quickly to a very much changed world, that no considerations for the accustomed standard of particular groups must be allowed to obstruct this adaptation, and that we learn once more to turn all our resources to wherever they contribute most to make us all richer. The adjustments that will be needed if we are to recover and surpass our former standards will be greater than any similar adjustments we had to make in the past; and only if everyone of us is ready individually to obey the necessities of this readjustment shall we be able to get through a difficult period as free men who can choose their own way of life. Let a uniform minimum be secured to everybody by all means; but let us admit at the same time that with this assurance of a basic minimum all claims for a privileged security of particular classes must lapse, that all excuses disappear for allowing groups to exclude newcomers from sharing their relative prosperity in order to maintain a special standard of their own.

It may sound noble to say: damn economics, let us build up a decent world-but it is, in fact, merely irresponsible. With our world as it is, with everyone convinced that the material conditions here or there must be improved, our only chance of building a decent world is that we can continue to improve the general level of wealth. The one thing modern democracy will not bear without cracking is the necessity of a substantial lowering of the standards of living in peace time or even prolonged stationariness ofits economic conditions.

People who admit that present political trends constitute a serious threat to our economic prospects, and through their economic effects endanger much higher values, are yet apt to deceive themselves that we are making material sacrifices to gain ideal ends.

It is, however, more than doubtful whether a fifty years’ approach towards collectivism has raised our moral standards, or whether the change has not rather been in the opposite direction. Though we are in the habit of priding ourselves on our more sensitive social conscience, it is by no means clear that this is justified by the practice of our individual conduct. On the negative side, in its indignation about the inequities of the existing social order, our generation probably surpasses most of its predecessors. But the effect of that movement on our positive standards in the proper field of morals, individual conduct, and on the seriousness with which we uphold moral principles against the expediencies and exigencies ofsocial machinery, is a very different matter.

Issues in this field have become so confused that it is necessary to go back to fundamentals. What our generation is in danger of forgetting is not only that morals are of necessity a phenomenon of individual conduct, but also that they can exist only in the sphere in which the individual is free to decide for himself and called upon voluntarily to sacrifice personal advantage to the observance of a moral rule. Outside the sphere of individual responsibility there is neither goodness nor badness, neither opportunity for moral merit nor the chance of proving one’s conviction by sacrificing one’s desires to what one thinks right. Only where we ourselves are responsible for our own interests and are free to sacrifice them, has our decision moral value. We are neither entitled to be unselfish at someone else’s expense, MATERIAL CONDITIONS AND IDEAL ENDS 217 nor is there any merit in being unselfish if we have no choice. The members of a society who in all respects are made to do the good thing have no title to praise. As Milton said: “If every action which is good or evil in a man ofripe years were under pittance and prescription and compulsion, what were virtue but a name, what praise should then be due to well-doing, what gramercy to be sober, just, or continent?”

Freedom to order our own conduct in the sphere where material circumstances force a choice upon us, and responsibility for the arrangement of our own life according to our own conscience, is the air in which alone moral sense grows and in which moral values are daily re-created in the free decision of the individual. Responsibility, not to a superior, but to one’s conscience, the awareness of a duty not exacted by compulsion, the necessity to decide which of the things one values are to be sacrificed to others, and to bear the consequences of one’s own decision, are the very essence of any morals which deserve the name. That in this sphere of individual conduct the effect of collectivism has been almost entirely destructive, is both inevitable and undeniable. A movement whose main promise is the relief from responsibilityl cannot but be anti-moral in its effect, however lofty the ideals to which it owes its birth. Can there be much doubt that the feeling of personal obligation to remedy inequities, where our individual power permits, has been weakened rather than strengthened, that both the willingness to bear responsibility and the consciousness that it is our own individual duty to know how to choose have been perceptibly impaired?

1 This becomes more and more clearly expressed as socialism approaches totalitarianism, and in this country is most explicitly stated in the programme ofthat latest and most totalitarian form of English socialism, Sir Richard Acland’s “Common-Wealth” movement. The main feature ofthe new order he promises is that in it the community will “say to the individual ‘Don’t you bother about the business of getting your own living’.” In consequence, of course, “it must be the community as a whole which must decide whether or not a man shall be employed upon our resources, and how and when and in what manner he shall work”, and that the community will have “to run camps for shirkers in very tolerable conditions”. Is it surprising that the author discovers that Hitler “has stumbled across (or has needed to make use of) a small part, or perhaps one should say one particular aspect of, what will ultimately be required of humanity”? (Sir Richard Acland, Bt., The Forward March, 1941, pp. 127, 126, 135, and 32).

There is all the difference between demanding that a desirable state of affairs should be brought about by the authorities or even being willing to submit provided everyone else is made to do the same, and the readiness to do what one thinks right oneself at the sacrifice of one’s own desires and perhaps in the face of hostile public opinion. There is much to suggest that we have in fact become more tolerant towards particular abuses, and much more indifferent to inequities in individual cases, since we have fixed our eyes on an entirely different system in which the state will set everything right. It may even be, as has been suggested, that the passion for collective action is a way in which we now without compunction collectively indulge in that selfishness which as individuals we had learnt a little to restrain. It is true that the virtues which are less esteemed and practised now-independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to bear risks, the readiness to back one’s own conviction against a majority, and the willingness to voluntary co-operations with one’s neighbours-are essentially those on which the working of an individualist society rests. Collectivism has nothing to put in their place, and in so far as it already has destroyed them it has left a void filled by nothing but the demand for obedience and the compulsion of the individual to do what is collectively decided to be good. The periodical election ofrepresentatives, to which the moral choice ofthe individual tends to be more and more reduced, is not an occasion on which his moral values are tested or where he has constantly to reassert and prove the order ofhis values, and to testify to the sincerity ofhis profession by the sacrifice ofthose of his values he rates lower to those he puts higher.

As the rules of conduct evolved by individuals are the source from which collective political action derives what moral standards it possesses, it would indeed be surprising if the relaxation of the standards of individual conduct were accompanied by a raising of the standards of social action. That there have been great changes is clear. Every generation, of course, puts some values higher and some lower than its predecessors. Which, however, are the aims which take a lower place now, which are the values which we are now warned may have to give way if they come into conflict with others? Which kind of values figure less prominently in the picture ofthe future held out to us by the popular writers and speakers than they did in the dreams and hopes of our fathers? It is certainly not material comfort, certainly not a rise in our standard of living or the assurance of a certain status in society which ranks lower. Is there a popular writer or speaker who dares to suggest to the masses that they might have to make sacrifices of their material prospects for the enhancement of an ideal end? Is it not, in fact, entirely the other way round? Are not the things which we are more and more frequently taught to regard as “nineteenth-century illusions” all moral values-liberty and independence, truth and intellectual honesty, peace and democracy, and the respect for the individual qua man instead of merely as the member of an organised group? What are the fixed poles now which are regarded as sacrosanct, which no reformer dare touch, since they are treated as the immutable boundaries which must be respected in any plan for the future? They are no longer the liberty of the individual, his freedom of movement, and scarcely that of speech. They are the protected standards of this or that group, their “right” to exclude others from providing their fellow-men with what they need. Discrimination between members and nonmembers of closed groups, not to speak of nationals of different countries, is accepted more and more as a matter of course; injustices inflicted on individuals by government action in the interest of a group are disregarded with an indifference hardly distinguishable from callousness; and the grossest violations of the most elementary rights of the individual, such as are involved in the compulsory transfer of populations, are more and more often countenanced even by supposed liberals. All this surely indicates that our moral sense has been blunted rather than sharpened. When we are reminded, as more and more frequently happens, that one cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs, the eggs which are broken are almost all of the kind which a generation or two ago were regarded as the essential bases of civilised life. And what atrocities committed by powers with whose professed principles they sympathise have not been readily condoned by many of our so-called “liberals”?

There is one aspect of the change in moral values brought about by the advance of collectivism which at the present time provides special food for thought. It is that the virtues which are held less and less in esteem and which consequently become rarer are precisely those on which the British people justly prided themselves and in which they were generally recognised to excel. The virtues possessed by the British people possessed in a higher degree than most other people, excepting only a few of the smaller nations, like the Swiss and the Dutch, were independence and self-reliance, individual initiative and local responsibility, the successful reliance on voluntary activity, non-interference with one’s neighbour and tolerance of the different and queer, respect for custom and tradition, and a healthy suspicion of power and authority. British strength, British character, and British achievements are to a great extent the result of a cultivation of the spontaneous. But almost all the traditions and institutions in which British moral genius has found its most characteristic expression, and which in turn have moulded the national character and the whole moral climate of England, are those which the progress of collectivism and its inherently centralistic tendencies are progressively destroying. A foreign background is sometimes helpful in seeing more clearly to what circumstances the peculiar excellencies of the moral atmosphere of a nation are due. And if one who, whatever the law may say, must for ever remain a foreigner, may be allowed to say so, it is one of the most disheartening spectacles of our time to see to what extent some of the most precious things which England has given to the world are now held in contempt in England herself. The English hardly know to what degree they differ from most other people in that they all, irrespective of party, hold to a greater or less extent the ideas which in their most pronounced form are known as liberalism. Compared with most other peoples only twenty years ago almost all Englishmen were liberals-however much they may have differed from party Liberalism. And even to-day the English conservative or socialist, no less than the liberal, if he travels abroad, though he may find the ideas and writings of Carlyle or Disraeli, of the Webbs or H. G. Wells, exceedingly popular in circles with which he has little in common, among Nazis and other totalitarians, if he finds an intellectual island where the tradition of Macaulay and Gladstone, of J. S. Mill or John Morley lives, will find kindred spirits who “talk the same language” as himself-however much he himself may differ from the ideals for which these men speCifically stood.

Nowhere is the loss of the belief in the specific values of British civilisation more manifest, and nowhere has it had a more paralysing effect on the pursuit of our immediate great purpose than in the fatuous ineffectiveness of most British propaganda. The first prerequisite for success in propaganda directed to other people is the proud acknowledgment of the characteristic values and distinguishing traits for which the country attempting it is known to the other peoples. The main cause of the ineffectiveness of British propaganda is that those directing it seem to have lost their own belief in the peculiar values of English civilisation or to be completely ignorant of the main points on which it differs from that of other people. The Left intelligentsia, indeed, have so long worshipped foreign gods that they seem to have become almost incapable of seeing any good in the characteristic English institutions and traditions. That the moral values on which most of them pride themselves are largely the product of the institutions they are out to destroy, these socialists cannot, of course, admit. And this attitude is unfortunately not confined to avowed socialists. Though one must hope that this is not true of the less vocal but more numerous cultivated Englishmen, if one were to judge by the ideas which find expression in current political discussion and propaganda the Englishmen who not only “the language speak that Shakespeare spake”, but also “the faith and morals hold that Milton held” seem to have almost vanished. 1

To believe, however, that the kind of propaganda produced by this attitude can have the desired effect on our enemies and particularly the Germans, is a fatal blunder. The Germans know this country, not well, perhaps, yet suffiCiently to know what are the characteristic traditional values of British life, and what for the past two or three generations has increasingly separated the minds of the two countries. If we wish to convince them, not only of our sincerity, but also that we have to offer a real alternative to the way they have gone, it will not be by concessions to their system of thought. We shall not delude them with a stale reproduction of the ideas of their fathers which we have borrowed from them-be it state-socialism, “Realpolitik” , “scientific” planning, or corporatism. We shall not persuade them by following them half the way which leads to totalitarianism. If the English themselves abandon the supreme ideal of the freedom and happiness ofthe individual, if they implicitly admit that their civilisation is not worth preserving, and that they know nothing better than to follow the path along which the Germans have led, they have indeed nothing to offer.

I Though the subject of this chapter has already invited more than one reference to Milton, it is difficult to resist the temptation to add here one more quotation, a very familiar one, though one, it seems, which nowadays nobody but a foreigner would dare to cite: “Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live.” It is, perhaps, significant that our generation has seen a host of American and English detractors of Milton-and that the first of them, Mr. Ezra Pound, was during this war broadcasting from Italy!

To the Germans all these are merely belated admissions that the British have been wrong all the way through, and that they themselves are leading the way to a new and better world, however appalling the period of transition may be. The Germans know that what they still regard as the British tradition and their own new ideals are fundamentally opposed and irreconcilable views of life. They might be convinced that the way they have chosen was wrongbut nothing will ever convince them that the British will be better guides on the German path.

Least of all will that type of propaganda appeal to those Germans on whose help we must ultimately count in rebuilding Europe because their values are nearest to our own. For experience has made them wiser and sadder men: they have learnt that neither good intentions nor efficiency of organisation can preserve decency in a system in which personal freedom and individual responsibility are destroyed. What the German and Italian who have learned the lesson above all want is protection against the monster state-not grandiose schemes for organisation on a colossal scale, but opportunity peacefully and in freedom to build up once more his own little world. It is not because they believe that to be ordered about by the British is preferable to being ordered about by the Prussians, but because they believe that in a world where British ideals have been victorious they will be less ordered about and left in peace to pursue their own concerns, that we can hope for support from some of the nationals of the enemy countries.

If we are to succeed in the war of ideologies and to win over the decent elements in the enemy countries, we must first of all regain the belief in the traditional values for which this country stood in the past, and must have the moral courage stoutly to defend the ideals which our enemies attack. Not by shamefaced apologies and by assurances that we are rapidly reforming, not by explaining that we are seeking some compromise between the traditional English values and the new totalitarian ideas, shall we win confidence and support. Not the latest improvements we may have effected in our social institutions, which count but little compared with the basic differences of two opposed ways of life, but our unwavering faith in those traditions which have made this country a country of free and upright, tolerant and independent people, is the thing that counts.