_Xg2	ENGLISH    SAGA
Disraeli the greatest tragedy that could befall her. "A civilised
community must rest on a large realised capital of thought and
sentiment; there must be a reserve fond of public morality to
draw upon in the exigencies of national life. Society has a soul as
well as a body. The traditions of a nation are part of its existence.
Its valour and its discipline, its venerable laws, its eloquence
and its scholarship are as much portions of its life as its
agriculture, its commerce and its engineering skill. ... If it be
true . . . that an aristorcacy distinguished merely by wealth
must perish from satiety, so I hold it equally true that a people
who recognise no higher aim than physical enjoyment must
become selfish and enervated. Under such circumstances the
supremacy of race which is the key to history will assert itself.
Some human progeny, distinguished by their bodily vigour or
their masculine intelligence . . . will assert their superiority
and conquer a world which deserves to be enslaved. It will then
be found that our boasted progress has only been an advancement
in a circle, and that our new philosophy has brought us back to"
that old serfdom which it has taken ages to extirpate."^1 When
these prophetic words were spoken sixteen years had still to elapse
before Adolf Hitler was born in an obscure town in central
Europe.
The real wealth of England was the character of her people.
To impair it was national suicide. Neither profits nor Utopian
theories could ever justify a policy so short-sighted. "A domestic
oligarchy under the guise of Liberalism, is denationalising
England," Disraeli wrote in 1840, at the outset of his political
career: "Hitherto we have been preserved from the effects of the
folly of modern legislation by the wisdom of our ancient manners.
The national character may yet save the Empire. The national
character is more important than the Great Charter or trial
by jury.** On the dusty roads from Mons to Marne river,
in the blood-stained agony of Somme and Passchendade, on
Dunkirk Beach and in the skies above the Channel, the truth of
that century-old prediction became dear.
It was because her ancient institutions fostered that character
' that Disraeli guarded them so jealously. In an age when thinking
Englishman were taught to regard them as anachronisms, a Jew
made it his life's work to educate the British people in an under-
standing of the true tradition of their country. His success was
^1 Mmyfamy & Bwddc, I_t 487.