The Diary of Beatrice Webb
Braybrooke, Neville
no diarist of this century had a sharper Confessions of a religious...
...All the set back "the achievement of economic which appeared in 1935, their hopes for same she continued to be drawn towards democracy in England for half a cen- the promised land are outlined...
...One of the mystical, and several times she mentury...
...Holmes han- by Eusebius, Ambrose, and Augustine is the United States...
...By John Helgeland, states - even her diary - will cease to cien regime...
...He but "no such Church seems in sight...
...Sidney also society to a socialist one...
...Our apologies to early development of French democracy...
...exist...
...on this side of the Atlantic he is typically considered increasingly illegitimate...
...In it he offers a sus- among political theorists about the virwander about disconsolate...
...A year earlier she had Constant's political theory...
...As the decade spoke of Soviet farming "incidentally progressed, the Webbs remained demo- liquidating the kulaks...
...In the diary there are the belief that there would follow a slow references to "the trapdoor disappear-, and steady transition from a capitalist ances of unwanted persons...
...Constant brought a formidable histori- Christians did in fact serve in the legions, In Brief cal, social, and psychological learning to although uneasily: those who were marthe formulation of his political tyred for refusing or leaving service were philosophy...
...When they disembarked at used the term after the revolution...
...She ways brought this supposed theorist of Campbell's narne was inadvertently longs to find a church without dogma - omitted at the end of her article on the private back into the public arena...
...After read- tained critical appreciation of Constant as tues and vices of liberal man...
...A Swiss-born cos- about him in America may yet become a electric fire has ceased to heat her, the mopolitan philosophe who moved easily political act...
...She Politics (book 5, chapter 1) that democ- writes devastatingly, too, of jumped-up I s S it possible, one asks oneself, to be a racy arose from people's thinking that if Labor wives, with their irredeemably Marxist-Democrat-or is this a con- they were equal in any respect, they were common minds, ridiculous high-heeled tradiction in terms...
...InWho was Benjamin Constant...
...She is a similar egalitarian base - but with a governments, she argues, was that its sixty-six when it opens, and her husband difference: it espouses the eventual with- M.P.s, as individuals, wanted to live the Sidney has just been appointed president ering away of the state...
...Constant also the ancient texts, and with representative Holmes...
...RICHARD M. VALELLY wireless has gone dead, and her cup of among an international aristocratic elite, tea has turned cold...
...Thus he often said and did appar- deed, their portrait of the thinking on war stant is almost completely unknown in ently inconsistent things...
...But does Constant speak to late Goethe or an Einstein with the moral now twentieth-century America...
...Patrick Hastings, who was Attorney General in 1924, is dismisTHE DIARY OF BEATRICE WEBB sian experience proved a turning-point sed as a weasel of a man, "destitute of all VOL...
...take, was a subject on which the Webbs that she shrugs off...
...He flirted with Napoleon, Robert J. Daly, and J. Patout Burns...
...The diary is superbly edited...
...Yale University, $27.50, 352 deeply involved himself in the great so- passages cited at length...
...spiritualization of the Christian vocation...
...A graduate student in dles this feature of his career well and darkly shadowed...
...In it she this claim rests heavily on Constant's fully), reading Constant and talking records how in the past few minutes the personal history...
...of Chicago, has written the first major does not address this issue fully, locating Francis of Assisi...
...What was meant lives of men of property and of rank...
...Holmes genius of a Buddha, a Christ, or a St...
...4:1924-1943, "THE WHEEL OF LIFE" for them...
...MOST JEWS other two being Britain and the United The first edition of the Webbs' book NT Y States...
...I American press...
...I have no home for study of Constant to be published by an his book instead within a raging debate my religious faculty," she laments...
...Jews and non-Jews can unthat, among other things, no chamber- Marxist-Democrat, goes another: that of derstand, perhaps for the first time, its pots were provided in the cabins, and that the social reformer who champions the unique features...
...The remark is the most puzzling carried the sub-title "A New Civilizain the entire diary...
...Marxism shares tially brought down the first two Labor covering the years 1924 to 1943...
...will unite the intellect of an Aristotle, a the author...
...cial and political transformations of his not make a brief for just-war theory...
...I Ceased to exist...
...Yet, less than fifteen years later, their nephews by marriage described it as she is referring to Russia as one of the a utopian dream...
...Her memoranda always had a re- by without protest when political purges Ave., NY 10016 forming end in view...
...The question is equal absolutely...
...Beatrice copies out the To the extent that Constant is known certain types of opinion and speech are paragraph and twice refers to the phrase...
...Yet to the ing A Passage to India, she identifies a democratic theorist...
...Could such happenings in a foreign to Judaism until recently-a on the Russian experiment...
...a good day's brainwork...
...Her belief in Christianity in 1927 that the Russian Revolution had In their book on Soviet Communism, she had abandoned in her youth...
...ity and justice...
...All of that ritable, but his tenacious mental grip on far less guidance than many have supshould change...
...He resembled in this respect rejecting not warfare but army religion...
...He was Malcolm world's "three great Democracies," the Muggeridge...
...Jewish passengers had been served with poor in her own country, but who stands $14.95 at better bookstores or direct from Oxford University Press, Dept...
...Then there were crats, but their views grew more radical the Moscow show trials under the Stal- n fact, the very term "religion" has been and their interest focused more and more inist regime...
...At one sophisticated introduction...
...Con- time...
...BENJAMIN CONSTANT AND THE MAKING Rousseau and Montesquieu...
...The plausibility of would have savored this strangeness eleven days before her death...
...ice...
...Stephen Holmes, profes- his ideal of "government by discus- posed when it comes to deciding what the sor of political science at the University sion," of robust public debate within the Gospel demands of Christians today in Commonweal: 382...
...HS, 200 Madison pork...
...Catholic tvomen preachers, Lost n played a critically important role in the When will a leader arise, she asks, who novation (p...
...Lenin had first Rabbi Nicholas de Lange points out in this themselves...
...The question-mark was dropped THE has to be seen in the context of the devel- with the second edition...
...near...
...He Fortress Press, $5.95, 101 pp...
...Origen's the paradoxical statement: "I am a reli- lic...
...What parvolume of The Diary of Beatrice Webb, laws and maintain them...
...It enabled them to say: "We the higher qualities of intellect...
...It was their final J H "RE GI N" opment of her thought during the 1930s...
...To be understood, it tion...
...He also manages extent that Holmes revitalizes Constant's with the elderly Mrs...
...The anti-military writings of Fathers remembering that between belief and Holmes partly agrees with this older like Tertullian and Hippolytus express disbelief, between the idea of annihila- wisdom, but goes far beyond it to recon- not pacifism but opposition to the tion and an afterlife, Beatrice frequently struct a fuller, more persuasive picture of idolatry-to the intricate system of found herself torn...
...however ernment fell, the Webbs abandoned their the new civilization presented them with belief in what Sidney called "the in- problems...
...But to bring about such shoes and desire to enter "smart Sociprompted by reading the fourth and final a society it was necessary to introduce ety" and mix with royalty...
...The Webbs at this period still eyed were unwilling to commit themselves...
...joint-enterprise, and they came to regard ...AND I N . In 1931, when the second Labor gov- it as a last will and testament...
...and the private was the true promise of other hand, stemmed from a Platonic liberal politics...
...To explain this sudden nature of privacy and foresaw many of lead the early church to be unambiguchange -- or what some might call a modernity's ominous political tenden- ously pacifist or opposed to military servkeeping open of all options - it is worth cies...
...One comes away from political philosophy can spend an entire relates it expertly to his political theory...
...ord straight by presenting Judaism on its word memorandum in which she noted So, along with the paradox of the own terms...
...Beatrice Democratic Communism in the mean- creed which satisfied her belief in equaltold her husband's constituents at a rally time became the ideal to be worked for...
...The authors do Pp...
...Of Ramsay Aristotle (whose works she passion- MacDonald she remarks that he is "a Neville Braybrooke ately revered) asserts in his writings on magnificent substitute for a leader...
...The last treated as a defender of privacy, someone Strange as it may seem (but Constant entry dated 19 April 1943 was written who hated the state...
...Certainly the Rus- and torture are carried out in another...
...So, in 1932, new civilization be excused as merely concept borrowed from Christianity as they decided to go and see the country for "infantile disorders...
...A proper balance between the public opposition to military service, on the gious agnostic...
...Therefore, the argu- "the basic thrust of the Lord's teaching is conceivable - and therefore that it will ment goes, he understood the precious clearly toward nonviolence," this did not not happen...
...no diarist of this century had a sharper Confessions of a religious agnostic pen when it came to writing about politicians at home...
...Yet 20 June 1986: 381 tions the need to worship "some force In our June 6 issue, Debra framework of limited government, albeyond and above human nature...
...of the Board of Trade by the first Labor by "eventual," or how long it would Social climbing in the Kremlin is a matter government...
...She Edited by Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie see the promised land, though not doubts if Stanley Baldwin is capable of Belknap/Harvard, $25, 519 pp...
...the excesses of the Jacobins horrified him CHRISTIANS AND THE MILITARY: THE Likewise, she predicts that kingdoms and despite his own great dislike for the an- EARLY EXPERIENCE...
...this historical study feeling that the exsemester on modern political thought Politics made Constant unhappy and ir- perience of the early church may provide without hearing his name...
...He shows oaths, symbols, and sacrifices which defint d her position when she had made that Constant also greatly valued the pub- permeated Roman military life...
...cannot help but speak to a time in which muddledom...
...Russia was still a savage and evitability of gradualness" - namely, backward land...
...Beatrice discovered in Communism a Communism with suspicion...
...Then suddenly she changes her but found him equally dismaying...
...Analyzing lanLeningrad, Beatrice handed the Russian point Beatrice admits: "One just shrugs guage as well as scripture, he sets the reccaptain of their ship a three-thousand- one's shoulders...
...mind and underlines her final words for eventually advocated liberal constitu- The authors' thesis is that although greater emphasis: "I feel that this is in- tional monarchy...
...But he was All this is argued with close references to OF MODERN LIBERALISM, by Stephen more than a scholar...
...Moore and her feel- to be genuinely engaging, for he is a ideal of "government by discussion" he ings of being involved in "a spiritual first-rate writer...
Vol. 113 • June 1986 • No. 12
