Initiation and initiative : an exploration of the life and ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović

96 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

to leaders who were themselves “muddled, characterless, and incapable of vision.”

To avoid “the ominous possibility of a revolution in blood”¢ the authors made their plea:

We wish men to realise that civilisation is the work of men. We wish a synthesis of the aims and interests of the whole community to be found, to be declared, and to be put into practice . . . It is our faith that this age, this mean and miserable twentieth century, can be a heroic age, an age of great culture, of a great prosperity, of a great peace, if only we choose to make it great.2”

They advocated the formation of “national inquiries” to study the interrelated economic, social and political problems of the age, and urged their readers to form “self-appointed councils” to act as study groups which should act “to bring the new social synthesis into consciousness, using every means to persuade the nation to act upon it.”28

Following the publication of Coal the links between the Chandos Group and the Sociological section of the Adler Society were strengthened. In January 1928 it was resolved to devote alternate meetings of the Sociological group to a consideration of Coal “as a basis for an examination of the present condition of national life.” Reckitt, Egerton Swann, Mairet, Newsome and Porter regularly lectured to the group on such topics as “National guilds,” “The position and prospects of Christian sociology” (Reckitt); “Party politics today,” “The meaning of revolution,” (Newsome); “Leisure,” “Aristocracy and the politics of today” (Mairet); “Internationalism and finance” (Egerton Swann); “The principles of politics” and “Methods of reform” (Porter).

It was therefore not too surprising that on December 20th 1928 it was resolved “that the Chandos Group find its vehicle of expression in the Sociological Group of the Adler Society, and while continuing to meet as a separate body, it do so as the Senate of the Gower Street Society.” In so doing, the members emphasised the importance of study, to discover the “absolute and eternal principles of true sociology”; but they laid equal stress on the necessity for action to “incarnate” such principles “on the plane of modern industrial life.” The specific reforms that they sought to promote embraced constitutional changes in the form of political devolution, social change in the form of guild socialism, and economic and financial reform in the guise of social credit. They observed that such a programme “must be regarded as partaking of the nature of a revolution.”

This formal acknowledgment of the links that existed between the Chandos Group and the Adler Society undoubtedly increased the sense of unease experienced by the members of the Medical Group within the Society. It