EDUCATION FOR AN AGE OF PLENTY 147

of any service to his contemporaries. The outcome is a belief
very widely held among the supporters of adult education in
our universities.

Briefly stated it is this. Upon the banks of the Isis there burns
a bright beacon which has illuminated the dark night of British
social culture with undimmed brilliance from the days of the
Wycliffite preachers to the benefactions of Lord Nuffield. Thence
Olympian runners ^dth torches in their hands carry the Prome-
thean flame into the Stygian darkness of Suburbia, Lancashire
and the Midlands. The Olympian runners are W.E.A. tutors
who have been to Oxford qr have sat at the feet of authentic
dons. After my brief remarks on the history of English social
culture further comment on the arrogant complacency which is
too common among university men would be out of place.
Anything I might say about the futility of social studies in our
universities has been said with more vigour and effect by Bernard
Shaw and H. G. Wells. Those who will not heed Moses and the
prophet will not heed me.

§3

The belief that freedom of thought can be justified by its sheer
uselessness has nothing in common with the educational ideals
of democracy when it was struggling to establish itself in Europe.
It will not survive the challenge of dictatorship in our own time.
If we cannot meet the challenge of dictatorship with a positive
educational programme, we must make way for a more virile
creed. The appeal of the Left Book Club, which turns to the
closed system of Marxism with the fanatical vehemence of the
racialist dogma in the Third Reich, is powerful because it is a
virile creed. Though I have more sympathy for the Left Book
Club than for the nebulous benevolence of the New Statesman, I
do not suppose that my comments on it will conciliate its
supporters, who treasure their resources of abuse for those who
are nearest akin to themselves.

In stating the view that periods of economic renaissance are
tunes when education is most closely allied to pressing social